.S7Y 

Copy A 



HERBERT SPENCER 



ON 



THE AMERICANS 



AND 



THE AMERICANS ON HERBERT SPENCER. 



BEING A FULL REPORT OF HIS INTERVIEW, AND OF 

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE FAREWELL 

BANQUET OF NOV. 11, 1882. 



KEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

1, 8, AKD 5 BOND STr.EET. 
1883. 



t 168 

.S7^ 



Cj)-^.u 



OOPTKIGHT BY 

D. AFPLETON AND COMPANY, 

1SS2. 



JoliDB Hopkin's Univ. U}k 
aiit. 



COJSTTEI^TS 



Peeface . . . . . . .5 

Eepoet of Me. Spencee's Ixteeyiew ... 9 

PEO0EEDI]!fG8 OF TflE SpENCEE BaNQUET . . .21 



THE SPEECHES. 
Me. Evaets's Remaeks 
Me. Spencee's Addeess 
Peofessoe Sumnee's Speech 
Remaeks of Me. Schuez 
Addeess of Peofessoe Maesii 
Me, Fiske's Speech 
Me. Beechee's Rejiaeks . 



25 
28 
35 
40 
45 
50 
58 



UXSPOKE^' SPEECHES. 

What Me. Youmaxs did xot say . . . .67 

What Me. Waed was eeady to say ' . " ' . . 76 

What Me. Leland got isro Chance to say . . 80 

LETTEPJ.' 

Lettee feom De. Holmes .... 84 

" Peesident "White , . . .85 

" Peesident Baenaed ... 86 

" R. Hebee Newton .... 87 

" J. B. Stallo . . . . .88 

" Geoege M. Dayie .... 89 

" Daniel Geeenleaf Thompson . . 89 

" Feed, W. Hineichs. ... 91 

" W. D. Le Sueue . . , .98 

" Wilmot L, Waeeen . . . .95 

" Hugh McCulloch .... 95 



6 PREFACE. 

cruited a little from better sleep, he consented to the arrangement. 
Mr. Spencer at first improved at Newport, and hoped that he 
might have a few days of strength to enjoy New York before 
leaving. But he was again disappointed, as is shown by the fol- 
lowing extract from a letter of November 4th : 

" I went wrong again at Boston, and my head has been since 
quite as much disordered as at any time since my arrival. I stay 
here until Wednesday, because it is absolutely needful to shun all 
excitements save that of the dinner itself. I must peremptorily 
decline committing myself to anything else. I am sorry to dis- 
appoint you and others; but, even as it is, I look forward with 
some alarm to the state of brain with which I shall start on my 
return voyage." 

It is thus apparent how serious an invahd our visitor was, 
how reasonable were his apprehensions of the effect of an excur- 
sion to this country, and how imperative was the necessity that 
he should maintain the utmost privacy while here. In fact, very 
soon after his arrival his chief solicitude was to recover vigor 
enough to get home again. Many of Mr. Spencer's friends all 
over the country were sorely disappointed at not being able to 
meet him, to shake hands with him, and express to him their 
admiration and their gratitude, but it is to be hoped they will 
recognize that his disabilities were such as to make this wholly 
impossible. 

The reference that it has been felt needful here to make to 
Mr. Spencer's state of health leads to a further consideration in 
relation to it. Having previously animadverted upon political 
questions, when interviewed, in his farewell remarks at the dinner 
he thought proper to address himself to a topic of more social and 
personal interest. Mr. Spencer is not practiced in the arts of 
after-dinner speech-making, and he was certainly in no condition 
to trust himself to impromptu remarks suitable to a festive oc- 
casion. He had but one opportunity to address the American 
people; and it was not the quality of the man to indulge in the 
strain of vulgar flattery that too many of his countrymen find 
available in their intercourse with Americans. He therefore 
chose to be true to himself as a sincere friend of our people, and 
to offer some suggestions which it seemed desirable for them to 
ponder. As a life-long student of social progress, he did not 



PREFACE. 7 

think American society liad reached the final stage of that prog- 
ress — and he said so. He thought the great ideal of American life 
— action, enterprise, work — neither a permanent nor the highest 
ideal of human society. The law of evolution, which has brought 
us up to this from a much lower condition, must carry us on still 
further. Work is but a means, and the highest objects of hfe are 
defeated when it is made an end. Wliere work becomes such a 
passion as to be pursued without regard to what it is/<?r, or as a 
means of varied and cultivated enjoyment, it must run into such 
excesses as to be widely and seriously injurious. He pointed out 
various of its evil consequences, and thought that what we most 
want is to give greater attention to those higher uses and ends of 
life to which work is tributary. The theme was wisely selected ; 
Mr. Spencer could have employed the occasion for no better pur- 
pose than to set the people to thinking how they are cheated out 
of the best that life can give by the mere craze and infatuation for 
working and learning. 

What Mr. Spencer said at the banquet has been received 
by nearly everybody in the best spirit, as wholesome truth that 
should be taken to heart. But some have thought it incongru- 
ous that a chronic invalid — himself a victim of overwork — should 
venture to talk to a robust and irrepressible people about the 
effects of overwork. Mr. Spencer may possibly have thought 
that experience counts for something in a matter of this kind ; 
but he treated the subject generally and impersonally, and said 
nothing about himself. Had he, however, seen fit to refer to him- 
self, there would have been tenfold strength in his case. He broke 
down completely from excessive overwork in 1855, and since that 
time has not known what it is to have a night of sound, refresh- 
ing sleep. And yet the magnitude of his labors during that period 
is to-day the astonishment of the world. And how has he ac- 
complished so great an amount of difficult work ? Simply by a 
devout observance of the requirements of his own gospel of re- 
laxation. He bas showed us, as no man ever before showed, what 
power of work comes out of the pleasure of cultivated amuse- 
ments. His recreations have been systematic — concerts, operas, 
theatres, billiards, social entertainments, city rambles, and coun- 
try excursions ; and it has been his fixed rule, when work grew 
burdensome, to strike his tasks abruptly and go away for pleas- 



8 PEEFACE. 

ure, and amuse himself till work again became itself attractive 
and enjoyable. 

Mr. Spencer's suggestions to the American people, that their 
intense passion for work is a mistake, were made on the basis of 
what he had observed of our characteristics, and what he knew of 
social tendencies ; but he might have abundantly re-enforced his 
view from the depths of his own experience, both with regard to 
the evils of overwork and the wonderful efficacy of recreation to 
diminish those evils. It is impossible, therefore, to break the 
force of his admonitions by any imputation of inconsistency. 

The proceedings of the banquet were very significant. That 
which has made possible the demonstration described in these 
pages can hardly fail to check much of the vicious criticism with 
which Mr. Spencer has been hitherto assailed. An excellent un- 
derstanding has grown up between him and our people, which 
began years ago, and has led at last to this cordial public expres- 
sion. He never dedicated but one work (the "Descriptive Soci- 
ology"), and that was as follows : 

"To MY American friends, in recognition of the en- 
couragement I HAVE received FROM THEIR EARLY SHOWN AND 
LONG-CONTINUED INTEREST IN MY WORKS." 

And the American people have returned the compliment by 
purchasing more than a hundred thousand of his books, reprinted 
in this country, and upon every volume of which he has been paid 
as if he had been an American author. 

No thanks to the American Government, however, which is 
alone among all civilized nations in refusing to recognize Herbert 
Spencer's right of property in the works into which he has put 
the labor of a life-time. 

E. L. Y. 



EEPOET 



OF 



MR. SPENCER'S INTERVIEW. 



The following report of an interview witli Mr. Spen- 
cer appeared in several ISTew York newspapers on the 
morning of October 20, 1882 : 

Hearing that Herbert Spencer had returned to New 
York in a somewhat improved condition of health, an 
intimate American friend obtained his consent to be ques- 
tioned regarding his impressions of this country, to the 
following effect : 

" I believe, Mr. Spencer, that you have not been inter- 
viewed since your arrival in this country ? " 

"I have not. The statements in the newspapers im- 
plying personal intercourse are unauthorized, and many 
of them incorrect. It was said, for example, that I was 
ill from the effects of the voyage ; the truth being that 
I suffered no inconvenience whatever, save that arising 
from disturbed rest. Subsequent accounts of me in re- 
spect of disorders, diet, dress, habits, etc., have been 
equally wide of the mark." 

"Have these misrepresentations been annoying to 
you?" 

" In some measure, though I am not very sensitive ; 
but I have been chiefly annoyed by statements which 



10 MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. 

affect, not myself only, but others. For some ten days 
or more there went on reappearing in various journals an 
alleged opinion of mine concerning Mr. Oscar Wilde. 
The statement that I had uttered it was absolutely base- 
less. I have expressed no opinion whatever concerning 
Mr. Oscar Wilde. Naturally, those who put in circula- 
tion fictions of this kind may be expected to mix much 
fiction with what fact they report." 

" Might not this misrepresentation have been avoided 
by admitting interviewers ? " 

" Possibly ; but, in the first place, I have not been 
sufficiently well ; and, in the second place, I am averse to 
the system. To have to submit to cross-examination, 
under penalty of having ill-natured things said if one re- 
fuses, is an invasion of personal liberty which I dislike. 
Moreover, there is implied what seems to me an undue 
love of personalities. Your journals recall a witticism of 
the poet Heine, who said that, * when a woman writes a 
novel, she has one eye on the paper and the other on some 
man — except the Countess Hahn-hahn, who has only one 
eye.' In like manner, it seems to me that, in the political 
discussions that fill your papers, everything is treated in 
connection with the doings of individuals — some candi- 
date for office, or some 'boss' or wire-puller. I think it 
not improbable that this appetite for personalities, among 
other evils, venerates this recklessness of statement. The 
appetite must be ministered to ; and, in the eagerness to 
satisfy its cravings, there comes less and less care respect- 
ing the correctness of what is said." 

"Has what you have seen answered your expecta- 
tions ? " 

" It has far exceeded them. Such books about Amer- 
ica as I had looked into had given me no adequate idea 
of the immense developments of material civilization 
which I have everywhere found. The extent, wealth, and 



MR. SPEXCER INTERVIEWED. H 

magnificence of your cities, and especially the splendor 
of New York, have altogether astonished me. Though I 
have not visited the wonder of the West, Chicago, yet 
some of your minor modern places, such as Cleveland, 
have sufficiently amazed me, by the marvelous results of 
one generation's activity. Occasionally, when I have 
been in places of some ten thousand inhabitants, where 
the telephone is in general use, I have felt somewhat 
ashamed of our own unenterprising towns ; many of 
which, of fifty thousand inhabitants and more, make no 
use of it." 

" I suppose you recognize in these results the great 
benefit of free institutions ? " 

" Ah, now comes one of the inconveniences of inter- 
viewing. I have been in the country less than two 
months ; have seen but a relatively small part of it, and 
but comparatively few people ; and yet you wish from 
me a definite opinion on a difficult question." 

"Perhaps you will answer, subject to the qualification 
that you are but giving your first impressions ? " 

"Well, with that understanding, I may reply that, 
though free institutions have been partly the cause, I 
think they have not been the chief cause. In the first 
place, the American people have come into possession of 
an unparalleled fortune — the mineral wealth, and the vast 
tracts of virgin soil producing abundantly with small cost 
of culture. Manifestly that alone goes a long way toward 
producing this enormous prosperity. Then they have 
profited by inheriting all the arts, appliances, methods, 
developed by older societies, while leaving behind the ob- 
structions existing in them. They have been able to pick 
and choose from the products of all past experience ; ap- 
propriating the good and rejecting the bad. Then, be- 
sides these favors of fortune, there are factors proper to 
themselves. I perceive in American faces generally, a 



12 MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. 

great amount of determination — a kind of ' do or die ' ex- 
pression ; and this trait of character, joined with a power 
of work exceeding that of any other people, of course 
produces an unparalleled rapidity of progress. Once 
more, there is the inventiveness, which, stimulated by the 
need for economizing labor, has been so wisely fostered. 
Among us in England, there are many foolish people who, 
while thinking that a man who toils with his hands has 
an equitable claim to the product, and, if he has special 
skill, may rightly have the advantage of it, also hold that 
if a man toils with his brain, perhaps for years, and, unit- 
ing genius with perseverance, evolves some valuable in- 
vention, the public may rightly claim the benefit. The 
Americans have been more far-seeing. The enormous 
museum of patents which I saw at Washington is signifi- 
cant of the attention paid to inventors' claims ; and the 
nation profits immensely from having, in this direction 
(though not in all others), recognized property in mental 
products. Beyond question, in respect of mechanical ap- 
pliances, the Americans are ahead of all nations. If, 
along with your material progress, there went equal 
progress of a higlier kind, there would remain nothing 
to be wished." 

" That is an ambiguous qualification. What do you 
mean by it ? " 

"You will understand when I tell you what I was 
thinking of the other day. After pondering over what I 
have seen of your vast manufacturing and trading estab- 
lishments, the rush of traffic in your street-cars and ele- 
vated railways, your gigantic hotels and Fifth Avenue 
palaces, I was suddenly reminded of the Italian repub- 
lics of the middle ages ; and recalled the fact that, while 
there was growing up in them great commercial activity, 
a development of the arts which made them the envy of 
Europe, and a building of princely mansions which con- 



MR. SPEXCER IXTERYIEWED. 13 

tinue to be the admiration of travelers, their people were 
gradually losing their freedom." 

" Do you mean this as a suggestion that we are doing 
the like?" 

" It seems to me that you are. You retain the forms 
of freedom, but, so far as I can gather, there has been a 
considerable loss of the substance. It is true that those 
who rule you do not do it by means of retainers armed 
with swords ; but they do it through regiments of men 
armed with voting-papers, who obey the word of com- 
mand as loyally as did the dependents of the old feudal 
nobles, and who thus enable their leaders to override the 
general will and make the community submit to their ex- 
actions as effectually as their prototypes of old. It is 
doubtless true that each of your citizens votes for the 
candidate he chooses for this or that office, from Presi- 
dent downward, but his hand is guided by a power be- 
hind, which leaves him scarcely any choice. * Use your 
political power as we tell you, or else throw it away,' is 
the alternative offered to the citizen. The political ma- 
chinery as it is now worked has little resemblance to that 
contemplated at the outset of your political life. Mani- 
festly, those who framed your constitution never dreamed 
that twenty thousand citizens would go to the poll led by 
a * boss.' America exemplifies, at the other end of the 
social scale, a change analogous to that which has taken 
place under sundry despotisms. You know that in Japan, 
before the recent revolution, the divine ruler, the Mikado, 
nominally supreme, was practically a puppet in the hands 
of his chief minister, the Shogun. Here it seems to me 
that the 'sovereign people' is fast becoming a puppet 
which moves and speaks as wire-pullers determine." 

" Then you think that republican institutions are a 
failure." 

" By no means ! I imply no such conclusion. Thirty 



14 MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. 

years ago, when often discussing politics with an English 
friend, and defending republican institutions, as I always 
have done and do still, and when he urged against me 
the ill- working of such institutions over here, I habit- 
ually replied that the Americans got their form of gov- 
ernment by a happy accident, not by normal progress, 
and that they would have to go back before they could 
go forward. What has since happened seems to me to 
have justified that view ; and what I see now confirms 
me in it. America is showing, on a larger scale than 
ever before, that * paper constitutions' will not work as 
they are intended to work. The truth, first recognized 
by Macintosh, that ' constitutions are not made, but grow,' 
which is part of the larger truth that societies throughout 
their whole organizations are not made but grow, at once, 
when accepted, disposes of the notion that you can work, 
as you hope, any artificially-devised system of government. 
It becomes an inference that if your political structure has 
been manufactured, and not grown, it will forthwith begin 
to grow into something different from that intended — 
something in harmony with the natures of citizens and 
the conditions under which the society exists. And it evi- 
dently has been so with you. Within the forms of your 
constitution there has grown up this organization of pro- 
fessional politicians, altogether uncontemplated at the 
outset, which has become in large measure the ruling 
power." 

" But will not education and the diffusion of political 
knowledge .fit men for free institutions ? " 

"No. It is essentially a question of character, and 
only in a secondary degree a question of knowledge. But 
for the universal delusion about education as a panacea 
for political evils, this would have been made sufficiently 
clear by the evidence daily disclosed in your papers. Are 
not the men who officer and control your Federal, State, 



MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. 15 

and municipal organizations — wlio manipulate your cau- 
cuses and conventions, and run your partisan campaigns 
— all educated men ? and has their education prevented 
them from engaging in, or permitting, or condoning, the 
briberies, lobbyings, and other corrupt methods which 
vitiate the actions of your administrations? Perhaps 
party newspapers exaggerate these things ; but what am 
I to make of the testimony of your civil-service reformers 
— men of all parties ? If I understand the matter aright, 
they are attacking, as vicious and dangerous, a system 
which has grown up under the natural spontaneous work- 
ing of your free institutions — are exposing vices which 
education has proved powerless to prevent." 

" Of course, ambitious and unscrupulous men will 
secure the offices, and education will aid them in their 
selfish purposes ; but would not those purposes be thwart- 
ed, and better government secured, by raising the stand- 
ard of knowledge among the people at large ? " 

" Very little. The current theory is that if the young 
are taught what is right, and the reasons why it is right, 
they will do what is right when they grow up. But, 
considering what religious teachers have been doing these 
tv/o thousand years, it seems to me that all history is 
against the conclusion, as much as is the conduct of these 
well-educated citizens I have referred to ; and I do not 
see why you expect better results among the masses. 
Personal interests will sway the men in the ranks as they 
sway the men above them ; and the education which fails 
to make the last consult public good rather than private 
good will fail to make the first do it. The benefits of 
political purity are so general and remote, and the profit 
to each individual so inconspicuous, that the common 
citizen, educate him as you like, will habitually occupy 
himself with his personal affairs, and hold it not worth 
his v/hile to fight against each abuse as soon as it appears. 



16 MR. SPEXCER INTERVIEWED. 

Not lack of information, but lack of certain moral senti- 
ments, is the root of the evil." 

" You mean that people have not a sufficient sense of 
public duty ? " 

" Well, that is one way of putting it ; but there is a 
more specific way. Probably it will surprise you if I say 
that the American has not, I think, a sufficiently quick 
sense of his own claims, and at the same time, as a neces- 
sary consequence, not a sufficiently quick sense of the 
claims of others — for the two traits are organically re- 
lated, I observe that you tolerate various small inter- 
ferences and dictations which Englishmen are prone to 
resist. I am told that the English are remarked on for 
their tendency to grumble in such cases ; and I have no 
doubt it is true." 

"Do you think it worth while for people to make 
themselves disagreeable by resenting every trifling ag- 
gression ? We Americans think it involves too much 
loss of time and temper, and doesn't pay." 

" Exactly. That is what I mean by character. It is 
this easy-going readiness to permit small trespasses, be- 
cause it would be troublesome or profitless or unpopular 
to oppose, which leads to the habit of acquiescence in 
wrong and the decay of free institutions. Free institu- 
tions can be maintained only by citizens each of whom is 
instant to oppose every illegitimate act, every assumption 
of supremacy, every official excess of power, however 
trivial it may seem. If, as you say of the American, he 
pauses to consider whether he can afford the time and 
trouble — Svhether it will pay' — corruption is sure to 
creep in. All these lapses from higher to lower forms 
begin in trifling ways ; and it is only by incessant watch- 
fulness that they can be prevented. As one of your early 
statesmen said, ' The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.' 
But it is far less against foreign aggressions upon na- 



MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. 17 

tional liberty that this vigilance is required than against 
the insidious growth of domestic interferences with per- 
sonal liberty. In some private administrations which I 
have been concerned with, I have often insisted, much to 
the disgust of officials, that, instead of assuming, as people 
usually do, that things are going right until it is proved 
that they are going wrong, the proper course is to assume 
that they are going wrong until it is proved that they 
are going right. You will find, continually, that private 
corporations, such as joint-stock banking companies, come 
to grief from not acting upon this principle. And what 
holds of these small and simple private administrations 
holds still more of the great and complex public adminis- 
trations. People are taught, and, I suppose, believe, that 
' the heart of man is deceitful above all things and des- 
perately wicked ' ; and yet, strangely enough, believing 
this, they place implicit trust in those they appoint to 
this or that function. I do not think so ill of human 
nature ; but, on the other hand, 1 do not think so well 
of human nature as to believe it will do without being 
watched." 

" You hinted that, while Americans do not assert their 
own individualities sufficiently in small matters, they, re- 
ciprocally, do not sufficiently respect the individualities 
of others." 

" Did I ? Here, then, comes another of the inconven- 
iences of interviewing. I should have kept this opinion 
to myself if you had asked me no questions ; and now I 
must either say what I do not think, which I can not, or 
I must refuse to answer, which perhaps will be taken to 
mean more than I intend, or I must specify, at the risk of 
giving offense. As the least evil, I suppose I must do the 
last. The trait I refer to comes out in various ways, 
small and great. It is shown by the disrespectful manner 
in which individuals are dealt with in your journals — the 



18 MR. SPENCER INTERVIEWED. 

placarding of public men in sensational headings, the 
dragging of private people and their affairs into print. 
There seems to be a notion that the public have a right 
to intrude on private life as far as they like ; and this I 
take to be a kind of moral trespassing. It is true that 
during the last few years we have been discredited in 
London by certain weekly papers which do the like (ex- 
cept in the typographical display) ; but in our daily press, 
metropolitan and provincial, there is nothing of the kind. 
Then, in a larger way, the trait is seen in this damaging 
of private property by your elevated railways without 
making compensation ; and it is again seen in the doings 
of railway governments, not only when overriding the 
rights of shareholders, but in dominating over courts of 
justice and State governments. The fact is, that free in- 
stitutions can be properly worked only by men each of 
whom is jealous of his own rights, and also sympathetic- 
ally jealous of the rights of others— will neither himself 
aggress on his neighbors, in small things or great, nor 
tolerate aggression on them by others. The republican 
form of government is the highest form of government ; 
but because of this it requires the highest type of human 
nature — a type nowhere at present existing. We have 
not grown up to it, nor have you." 

" But we thought, Mr. Spencer, you were in favor of 
free government in the sense of relaxed restraints, and 
letting men and things very much alone — or what is 
cixlled. laissez /aire P ^^ 

" That is a persistent misunderstanding of my oppo- 
nents. Everywhere, along with the reprobation of gov- 
ernment-intrusion into various spheres where private ac- 
tivities should be left to themselves, I have contended 
that in its special sphere, the maintenance of equitable 
relations among citizens, governmental action should be 
extended and elaborated." 



MR. SPEXCER INTERVIEWED. 19 

" To return to your various criticisms : must I, then, 
understand that you think unfavorably of our fu- 
ture?" 

"No one can form anything more than vague and 
general conclusions respecting your future. The factors 
are too numerous, too vast, too far beyond measure in 
their quantities and intensities. The world has never be- 
fore seen social phenomena at all comparable with those 
presented in the United States. A society spreading 
over enormous tracts while still preserving its political 
continuity is a new thing. This progressive incorpora- 
tion of vast bodies of immigrants of various bloods has 
never occurred on such a scale before. Large empires 
composed of different peoples have, in previous cases, 
been formed by conquest and annexation. Then your 
immense plexus of railways and telegraphs tends to con- 
solidate this vast aggregate of States in a way that no 
such aggregate has ever before been consolidated. And 
there are many minor co-operating causes unlike those 
hitherto known. No one can say how it is all going to 
work out. That there will come hereafter troubles of 
various kinds, and very grave ones, seems highly prob- 
able ; but all nations have had, and will have, their 
troubles. Already you have triumphed over one great 
trouble, and may reasonably hope to triumph over others. 
It may, I think, be reasonably held that, both because 
of its size and the heterogeneity of its components, the 
American nation will be a long time in evolving its 
ultimate form, but that its ultimate form will be high. 
One great result is, I think, tolerably clear. From biolog- 
ical truths it is to be inferred that the eventual mixture of 
the allied varieties of the Aryan race forming the popula- 
tion will produce a finer type of man than has hitherto 
existed, and a type of man more plastic, more adaptable, 
more capable of undergoing the modifications needful for 



20 SIR- SPEXCER INTERVIEWED. 

complete social life.* I think that, whatever difficulties 
they may have to surmount, and whatever tribulations 
they may have to pass through, the Americans may 
reasonably look forward to a time when they will have 
produced a civilization grander than any the world has 
known." 

* This passage has been misunderstood. Mr. Spencer has been sup- 
posed to mean that great advantage will result from mixture of all the 
races now on the American Continent. Nothing could be further from 
his meaning. It is a corollary from biological facts that mixture of 
widely-divergent varieties of a species, such as are the Europeans, Afri- 
cans, and Asiatics, is extremely injurious ; while mixture of slightly- 
divergent varieties of a species, such as are the divisions of the Aryan 
race inhabiting different parts of Europe, is extremely beneficial. 



PEOOEEDINGS 



SPENCER BANQUET 



Theee v/as a very strong desire, on the part of a great 
number of the most intelligent people in the United 
States, to meet and welcome Herbert Spencer — a feeling 
that would have broken into formal ovation in every city 
could the opportunity have been given. And there were 
many who felt that, at any rate, he must not leave our 
shores until a chance had been afforded for some public 
expression of the sentiments, entertained by multitudes, of 
admiration for his genius and appreciation of his eminent 
services in the world of thought. But it was long un- 
certain whether he would be able to take part in any pro- 
ceedings of this kind, and, when at last he consented, the 
time was very short to make the desirable preparations. 
The customary formal correspondence of invitation and 
acceptance that precedes such occasions was therefore 
omitted, and the more readily because it was known to 
be in this case wholly superfluous. So strong, even in- 
tense, was the desire to participate in any demonstration 
of the kind, that it became necessary to keep all mention 
of the banquet out of the newspapers as far as possible, 
as the less widely it was known the fewer would be the 
disappointments. It was at first intended to take a large 



22 



THE SPENCER BANQUET. 



place that would accommodate five hundred persons at 
table, but there was not time for this, and Delmonico's 
hall had to be accepted, with a convenient capacity of 
about two hundred seats. At a meeting held for the 
purpose, a committee was appointed to take charge of the 
arrangements, which consisted of the following gentle- 



men : 



E. R. Leland, Chccirman, 
John S. Kew^beery, 
W. ^y. AprLETON, 



Henry Draper, 
F. F. Marbury, 
W. J. YOUMANS, Secretary. 



There has been no little complaint on the part of 
many who did not get invitations to the dinner. But 
they should remember that, had they been invited, oth- 
ers must have been excluded ; and, moreover, all the 
preparations had to be very hurriedly made. The affair 
was, however, in the highest degree successful in every 
respect. The following is a list of the subscribers : 



Fessenden N. Otis. 
IsTelson M. Beckwith. 
Thomas Hitchcock. 
Horace White. 
Frederic W. Stevens. 
William C. Church. 
Ogden K. Rood. 
Edward Tuck. 
David Dudley Field. 
Francis F. Marbury. 
Edmund C. Stedman. 
Daniel M. Stimson. 
Carl Schurz. 
Parke Godwin. 
Rev. W. H. Piatt. 
William E. Ward. 
Jonas M. Libbey. 
Hamilton Cole. 



Edward C. Hegeler. 
Edward L. Youmans. 
William J. Youmans. 
Cyrus W. Field. 
Leonidas M. Lawson. 
Frederic H. Betts. 
William T. Lusk. 
John S. Newberry. 
Salem H. Wales.* 
Hugh McCulloch. 
J. Spencer Turner. 
Richard T. Colburn. 
E. P. Hurd. 
Daniel G. Thompson. 
Charles Frederic Adams. 
Frederick W. Devoe. 
J. Seaver Page. 
William G. Sumner. 



SUBSCRIBERS. 



23 



John Fiske. 
John P. Townsend. 
Courtlandt Palmer. 
Thaddeus B. Wakeman. 
James W. Pinchot. 
Henry Draper. 
Hooper C. Vanvorst. 
Henry W. Stevens. 
Brayton Ives. 
Abram S. Hewitt. 
John C. Eno. 
Calvert Yaux. 
Joseph W. Drexel. 
David Buffum. 
Samuel J. Colgate. 
Robert B. Minturn. 
William H. Appleton. 
Rowland G. Hazard. 
Cyrus Butler. 
Charles A. Coombs. 
Earle S. Youmans. 
Charles B. Boothe. 
William A. Eddy. 
William W. Appleton. 
Daniel S. Appleton. 
Yincenza Botta. 
Edward A. Silsbee. 
Edward C. Spitzka. 
William Green ough. 
Abraham Jacobi. 
Sir Richard Temple. 
Chai'lton T. Lewis. 
Lyman Abbott. 
George P. Peabody. 
Charles Holt. 
John Bigelow. 
Fordyce Barker. 
William M. Boucher. 
R. Heber Newton. 
Amos M. Kellogg. 
Grenville M. We^eks. 
Rev. Mr. Morgan. 



Eugene R. Leland. 
Edward Appleton. 
Oliver B. Bunce. 
Minott J. Savage. 
William Lummis. 
Coe D. Tows. 
Samuel L. Post, Jr. 
Alfred Selman. 
Henry W. Farnam. 
James Johonnot. 
Francis A. Stout. 
Norman A. Calkins. 
Simon Sterne. 
Eiihu Root. 
Chauncey M. Dcpew. 
Charles K. Flint. 
Morris K. Jesup. 
Henry Ward Beecher. 
William H. Draper. 
William H. Hurlbert. 
Stephen A. Walker. 
William D. Shipman. 
Cyrus W. Shaw. 
Richard H. Manning. 
Gerardus H. Wynkoop. 
Francis O. French. 
Richard H. Derby. 
Grant B. Schley. 
Ernest Groesbeck. 
George R. Cathcart. 
Henry Holt. 
Sherburne B. Eaton. 
Perry Belmont. 
Herbert Nichols. 
Benjamin H. Bristow. 
John Elderkin. 
Pliny T. Sexton. 
William A. Hammond. 
Edwin L. Godkin. 
Gilbert M. Speir. 
Grosvenor P. Lowrey. 
Geors^e L. Roberts. 



24 



THE SPENCER BANQUET. 



Andrew H. Green. 
W. Leaman. 
Othniel C. Marsh. 
D. Cady Eaton. 
William W. Farnam. 
Morris H. Henry. 
Charles A. Dana. 
Erastus Wiman. 
David H. Cochran. 
Richard M. Hunt. 
Matthias N. Forney. 
Nelson J. Gates. 
D. Yan Kostrand. 
Samuel Shethar. 
Charles PI. Coffin. 
Junius Henri Browne. 
Frederic J. De Peyster. 
William M. Evarts. 
Albert Bierstadt. 
Willard Bartlett. 
Paul Dana. 
Andrew J. Kickoff. 
Charles M. Lunojren. 



Birdseye Blakeman. 
Addison Brown. 
John Q. A. Ward. 
C. E. Billquist. 
H. L. Bridgman. 
Edward Lott. 
Andrew Carnegie. 
Charles F. MacLean. 
Archibald Alexander. 
J. S. Cox. 
Lester F. Ward. 
James C. Carter. 
Donald Manson. 
J. P. Crawford. 
Samuel H. Scudder. 
Robert H. Lamborn. 
Allen Thorndike Rice. 
Wilmot L. Warren. 
William M. Ivins. 
Charles W. Dayton. 
Cooper Hewitt. 
William D. Kelley. 
George B. Loring. 



The gathering at Delmonico's, on the evening of No* 
vember 9th, was large, cultivated, and brilliant. The 
dinner was elaborate and elegant, and the decorations 
quiet but in admirable taste. A band played selected 
pieces, though some thought there was a little too much 
music for easy conversation. All were delighted, and the 
enthusiasm of the occasion ran high. The Hon. William 
M. Evarts presided with his usual grace and felicity, and 
his happy address of welcome was cordially received. 
Mr. Spencer was greeted with long and hearty applause, 
mingled with cheers and the waving of handkerchiefs. 
His speech, which was delivered in a low, conversational 
tone, and without gesture, betrayed his extreme physical 
weakness, but it was listened to in deep silence and with 



MR. EVARTS'S REMARKS. 25 

rapt attention. He sat down amid renewed and vehement 
applause. 

The speeches that followed well befitted the occasion 
as a tribute of honor to a great thinker. They were 
thoughtful speeches, designed not only to gratify the im- 
mediate listeners, but to have weight with readers when 
subsequently published. They were all thoroughly appre- 
ciated, and most heartily applauded. 



THE SPEECHES. 



MR. EYARTS'S REMARKS. 

When the dinner had been finished, Mr. Evarts rose 
to introduce Mr. Spencer. He was received with ap- 
plause, and said : 

We are here to-night, gentlemen, to show the feeling 
of Americans toward o;.r distinguished guest. As no 
room and no city can hold all his friends and admirers, 
it was necessary that a company should be made up by 
some method out of the mass, and what so good a method 
as that of natural selection (laughter), and the inclusion 
within these walls of the ladies ? It is a little hard upon 
the natural instincts and experience of man that we 
should take up the abstruse subjects of philosophy and 
of evolution, of all the great topics that make up Mr. 
Spencer's contribution to the learning and the wisdom of 
his time, at this end of the dinner. The most ancient 
nations, even in their primitive condition, saw the folly 
of this, and when one wished either to be inspired with 



26 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

the thoughts of others, or to be himself a diviner of the 
thoughts of others, fasting was necessary, and the Ama- 
zuUis, from whom I think a great many things might be 
learned for the good of the people of the present time, 
have a maxim that will commend itself to your common 
sense. They say the continually stuffed body can not 
see secret things. (Laughter.) Now, from my personal 
knowledge of the men I see at these tables, they are 
owners of continually stuffed bodies. (Laughter.) I 
have addressed them at public dinners, on all topics and 
for all purposes, and whatever sympathy they may have 
shown with the divers occasions which brought them to- 
gether, they come up to the Amazulu notion of continu- 
ally stuffed bodies. Li primitive times they had a custom 
which we, only under the system of differentiation, prac- 
tice now at this dinner. When men wished to possess 
themselves of the learning, the wisdom, the philosophy, 
the courage, the great traits of any person, they immedi- 
ately proceeded to eat him up as soon as he was dead 
(laughter), having only this diversity in that early time 
■ — that he should be either roasted or boiled, according as 
he was fat or thin. (Laughter.) Now, out of that nar- 
row compass, see how by the process of differentiation 
and of multiplication of effects we have come to a dinner 
of a dozen courses and wines of as many varieties ; and 
that simple process of appropriating the virtue and the 
wisdom of the great man that was brought before the 
feast is now diversified into an analysis of all the men 
here under the cunning management of many speakers. 
No doubt, preserving, as we do, the identity of all these 
institutions, it is often considered a great art, or at least 
a great delight, to roast our friends and put in hot 
water those against whom we have a grudge. (Laugh- 
ter.) 

Now, Mr. Spencer, we are glad to meet you here. (Ap- 



MR. EVARTS'S REMARKS. 27 

plause.) We are glad to see you, and we are glad to have 
you see us. (Laughter.) We are glad to see you, for 
we recognize in the breadth of your knowledge, such 
knowledge as is useful to your race, a greater compre- 
hension than any living man has presented to our genera- 
tion. (Applause.) We are glad to see you because in 
our judgment you have brought to the analysis and dis- 
tribution of this vast knowledge a more penetrating in- 
telligence and a more thorough insight than any living 
man has brought even to the minor topics of his special 
knowledge. (Applause.) In theology, in psychology, in 
natural science, in the knov/ledge of individual man and 
his exposition, and in the knowledge of the world, in 
the proper sense of society which makes up the world, 
the world worth knowing, the world worth ' speaking of, 
the world worth planning for, the world worth working 
for — we acknowledge your labors as surpassing those 
of any of our kind. (Applause.) You seem to us to 
carry away and maintain in the future the same meas- 
ure of fame among others that we are told was given 
in the middle ages to Albertus Magnus, the most learned 
man of those times, whose comprehension of theology, 
of psychology, of natural history, of politics, of his- 
tory, and of learning, comprehended more than any man 
since the classic time, certainly ; and yet it was found 
of him that his knowledge v\^as rather an accumulation, 
and that he had added no new processes and no new 
wealth to the learning which he had achieved. 

Now, I have said that we are glad to have you see us. 
You have already treated us to a very unique piece of 
work in vivisection (laughter), and we are expecting, 
perhaps, that the world may be instructed after you are 
safely on the other side of the Atlantic in a more inti- 
mate and thorough manner concerning our merits and our 
few faults. (Applause and laughter.) This faculty of 



28 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

laying on a dissecting-board an entire nation or an entire 
age and finding out all the arteries and veins and pulsa- 
tions of their life, is an extension beyond any that our 
own medical schools aiford. You give us that knowledge 
of man w^hich is practical and useful, and whatever the 
claims or the debates may be about your system or the 
system of those who agree with you, and however it may 
be compared with other competing systems that have 
preceded it, we must all agree that it is practical, that it 
is benevolent, that it is serious, and that it is reverent 
(applause) ; that it aims at the highest results in virtue ; 
that it treats evil not as eternal, but as evanescent, and 
that it expects to arrive at what is sought through faith 
in the millennium — that condition of affairs in which 
there is the highest morality and the greatest happiness. 
(Applause.) And if we can come to that by these proc- 
esses and these instructions, it matters little to the race 
whether it be called scientific morality and mathematical 
freedom, or by another less pretentious name. (Ap- 
plause.) — You will please fill your glasses, while I pro- 
pose the health of our guest, Herbert Spencer. (Contin- 
ued applause.) 



MR. SPENCER'S ADDRESS. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : Along with your 
kindness there comes to me a great unkindness from Fate ; 
for, now that, above all times in my life, I need full com- 
mand of what powers of speech I possess, disturbed health 
so threatens to interfere with them that I fear I shall 
very inadequately express myself. Any failure in my 
response you must please ascribe, in part at least, to a 
greatly disordered nervous system. Regarding you as 
representing Americans at large, I feel that the occa- 



MR. SPENCER'S ADDRESS. 29 

sion is one on which arrears of thanks are due. I ought 
to begin with the time, some two-and-twenty years ago, 
when my highly-valued friend Professor Youmans, mak- 
ing efforts to diffuse my books here, interested on their 
behalf the Messrs. Appleton, who have ever treated me 
so honorably and so handsomely ; and I ought to detail 
from that time onward the various marks and acts of 
sympathy by which I have been encouraged in a struggle 
which vv^as for many years disheartening. But, intimat- 
ing thus briefly my general indebtedness to my numerous 
friends, most of them unknown, on this side of the Atlan- 
tic, I must name more especially the many attentions and 
proffered hospitalities met with during my late tour, as 
well as, lastly and chiefly, this marked expression of the 
sympathies and good wishes which many of you have 
traveled so far to give, at great cost of that time which is 
so precious to the American. I believe I may truly say 
that the better health which you have so cordially wished 
me, will be in a measure furthered by the wish ; since all 
pleasurable emotion is conducive to health, and, as you 
will fully believe, the remembrance of this event will ever 
continue to be a source of pleasurable emotion, exceeded 
by few, if any, of my remembrances. 

And now that I have thanked you, sincerely though 
too briefly, I am going to find fault with you. Already, 
in some remarks drawn from me respecting American 
affairs and American character, I have passed criticisms, 
which have been accepted far more good-naturedly than 
I could reasonably have expected ; and it seems strange 
that I should now again propose to transgress. How- 
ever, the fault I have to comment upon is one which 
most will scarcely regard as a fault. It seems to me that 
in one respect Americans have diverged too widely 
from savages. I do not mean to say that they are in 
general unduly civilized. Throughout large parts of the 



30 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

poj^nlation, even in long-settled regions, there is no excess 
of those virtues needed for the maintenance of social har- 
mony. Especially out in the West, men's dealings do 
not yet betray too much of the " sweetness and light " 
which we are told distinguish the cultured man from 
the barbarian. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which 
my assertion is true. You know that the primitive man 
lacks power of application. Spurred by hunger, by dan- 
ger, by revenge, he can exert himself energetically for a 
time ; but his energy is spasmodic. Monotonous daily toil 
is impossible to him. It is otherwise with the more de- 
veloped man. The stern discipline of social life has 
gradually increased the aptitude for persistent industry ; 
until, among us, and still more among you, work has be- 
come with many a passion. This contrast of nature has 
another aspect. The savage thinks only of present satis- 
factions, and leaves future satisfactions uncared for. Con- 
trariwise, the American, eagerly pursuing a future good, 
almost ignores what good the passing day offers him ; 
and, when the future good is gained, he neglects that 
while striving for some still remoter good. 

What I have seen and heard during my stay among 
you, has forced on me the belief that this slow change 
from habitual inertness to persistent activity, has reached 
an extreme from w^hich there must begin a counter- 
change — a reaction. Everywhere I have been struck 
with the number of faces which told in strong lines of 
the burdens that had to be borne. I have been struck, too, 
with the large proportion of gray-haired men ; and in- 
quiries have brought out the fact that with you the hair 
commonly begins to turn some ten years earlier than 
with us. Moreover, in every circle I have met men who 
had themselves suffered from nervous collapse due to 
stress of business, or named friends who had either killed 
themselves by overwork, or had been permanently inca- 



ME. SPEXCER'S ADDRESS. 31 

pacitated, or had wasted long periods in endeavors to re- 
cover health. I do but echo the opinion of all the observ- 
ant persons I have spoken to, that immense injury is being 
done by this high-pressure life — the physique is being 
undermined. That subtle thinker and poet whom you 
have lately had to mourn, Emerson, says, in his essay on 
the gentleman, that the first requisite is that he shall 
be a good animal. The requisite is a general one — it 
extends to the man, to the father, to the citizen. We 
hear a great deal about " the vile body " ; and many are 
encouraged by the phrase to transgress the laws of health. 
But Nature quietly suppresses those who treat thus dis- 
respectfully one of her highest products, and leaves the 
world to be peopled by the descendants of those who are 
not so foolish. 

Beyond these immediate mischiefs there are remoter 
mischiefs. Exclusive devotion to work has the result 
that amusements cease to please ; and, when relaxation 
becomes imperative, life becomes dreary from lack of its 
sole interest — the interest in business. The remark cur- 
rent in England that, when the American travels, his aim 
is to do the greatest amount of sight-seeing in the short- 
est time, I find current here also : it is recognized that 
the satisfaction of getting on, devours nearly all other 
satisfactions. When recently at Niagara, which gave ns 
a whole week's pleasure, I learned from the landlord 
of the hotel that most Americans come one day and go 
away the next. Old Froissart, who said of the English 
of his day that " they take their pleasures sadly after their 
fashion," v^^ould doubtless, if he lived now, say of the 
Americans that they take their pleasures hurriedly after 
their fashion. In large measure with us, and still more 
with you, there is not that abandonment to the moment 
which is requisite for full enjoyment ; and this abandon- 
ment is prevented by the ever-present sense of multitu- 



32 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

dinous responsibilities. So that, beyond the serious phys- 
ical mischief caused by overwork, there is the further 
mischief that it destroys what value there would other- 
wise be in the leisure j^art of life. 

Nor do the evils end here. There is the injury to 
posterity. Damaged constitutions reappear in children, 
and entail on them far more of ill than great fortunes 
yield them of good. When life has been duly rational- 
ized by science, it will be seen that among a man's duties 
care of the body is imperative, not only out of regard 
for personal welfare, but also out of regard for descend- 
ants. His constitution will be considered as an entailed 
estate, which he ought to pass on uninjured if not im- 
proved to those who follow ; and it will be held that 
millions bequeathed by him will not compensate for 
feeble health and decreased ability to enjoy life. Once 
more, there is the injury to fellow-citizens, taking the 
shape of undue disregard of competitors. I hear that 
a great trader among you deliberately endeavored to 
crush out every one whose business competed w^ith his 
own ; and manifestly the man who, making himself a 
slave to accumulation, absorbs an inordinate share of the 
trade or profession he is engaged in, makes life harder 
for all others engaged in it, and excludes from it many 
who might otherwise gain competencies. Thus, besides 
the egoistic motive, there are two altruistic motives which 
should deter from this excess in work. 

The truth is, there needs a revised ideal of life. Look 
back through the past, or look abroad through the present, 
and we find that the ideal of life is variable, and depends 
on social conditions. Every one knows that to be a suc- 
cessful warrior v/as the highest aim among all ancient 
peoples of note, as it is still among many barbarous peo- 
ples. When we remember that in the Norseman's heaven 
the time was to be passed in daily battles, with magical 



MR. SPENCER'S ADDRESS. 33 

healing of wounds, we see how deeply rooted may become 
the conception that fighting is man's proper business, 
and that industry is fit only for slaves and people of low 
degree. That is to say, when the chronic struggles of 
races necessitate perpetual wars, there is evolved an ideal 
of life adapted to the requirements. We have changed 
all that in modern civilized societies, especially in Eng- 
land, and still more in America. With the decline of 
militant activity, and the growth of industrial activity, 
the occupations once disgraceful have become honorable. 
The duty to work has taken the place of the duty to 
fight ; and in the one case, as in the other, the ideal of 
life has become so well established that scarcely any 
dream of questioning it. Practically, business has been 
substituted for war as the purpose of existence. 

Is this modern ideal to survive throughout the future ? 
I think not. While all other things undergo continuous 
change, it is impossible that ideals should remain fixed. 
The ancient ideal was appropriate to the ages of conquest 
by man over man, and spread of the strongest races. The 
modern ideal is appropriate to ages in which conquest of 
the Earth and subjection of the powers of Nature to hu- 
man use, is the predominant need. But hereafter, when 
both these ends have in the main been achieved, the ideal 
formed will probably differ considerably from the present 
one. May we not foresee the nature of the difference ? 
I think we may. Some twenty years ago, a good friend 
of mine and a good friend of yours, too, though you 
never saw him, John Stuart Mill, delivered at St. An- 
\lrews an inaugural address on the occasion of his ap- 
pointment to the Lord Rectorship. It contained much 
to be admired, as did all he wrote. There ran through 
it, however, the tacit assumption that life is for learn- 
ing and working. I felt at the time that I should have 
liked to take up the opposite thesis. I should have liked 



3i THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

to contend that life is not for learning, nor is life for 
working, but learning and working are for life. The 
primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct 
under all circumstances as shall make living complete. 
All other uses of knowledge are secondary. It scarcely 
needs saying that the primary use of work is that of sup- 
plying the materials and aids to living completely ; and 
that any other uses of work are secondary. But in men's 
conceptions the secondary has in great measure usurped 
the place of the primary. The apostle of culture as it is 
commonly conceived^ Mr. Matthew Arnold, makes little 
or no reference to the fact that the first use of knowledge 
is the right ordering of all actions ; and Mr. Carlyle, who 
is a good exponent of current ideas about work, insists on 
its virtues for quite other reasons than that it achieves 
sustentation. We may trace everywhere in human af- 
fairs a tendency to transform the means into the end. 
Ail see that the miser does this when, making the accu- 
mulation of money his sole satisfaction, he forgets that 
money is of value only to purchase satisfactions. But it 
is less commonly seen that the like is true of the work 
by which the money is accumulated — that industry, too, 
bodily or mental, is but a means, and that it is as irra- 
tional to pursue it to the exclusion of that complete living 
it subserves, as it is for the miser to accumulate money 
and make no use of it. Hereafter, when this age of active 
material progress has yielded mankind its benefits, there 
will, I think, come a better adjustment of labor and en- 
joyment. Among reasons for thinking this, there is the 
reason that the process of evolution throughout the or- 
ganic world at large, brings an increasing surplus of en- 
ergies that are not absorbed in fulfilling material needs, 
and points to a still larger surplus for humanity of the 
future. And there are other reasons, which I must pass 
over. In brief, I may say that we have had somewhat too 



PROFESSOR SUMNER'S SPEECH. 35 

much of " the gospel of work." It is time to preach the 
gospel of relaxation. 

This is a very unconventional after-dinner speech. 
Especially it will be thought strange that in returning 
thanks I should deliver something very much like a hom- 
ily. But I have thought I could not better convey my 
thanks than by the expression of a sympathy which issues 
in a fear. If, as I gather, this intemperance in work af- 
fects more especially the Anglo-American part of the 
population — if there results an undermining of the phy- 
sique not only in adults, but also in the young, who, as 
I learn from your daily journals, are also being injured 
by overwork — if the ultimate consequence should be a 
dwindling away of those among you who are the inheri- 
tors of free institutions and best adapted to them ; then 
there will come a further difficulty in the working out of 
that great future which lies before the American nation. 
To my anxiety on this account, you must please ascribe 
the unusual character of my remarks. 

And now I must bid you farewell. When I sail by 
the Germanic on Saturday, I shall bear with me pleasant 
remembrances of my intercourse with many Americans, 
joined with regrets that my state of health has prevented 
me from seeing a larger number. 



PROFESSOR SUMNER'S SPEECH. 

The chairman next introduced Professor W. G. Sum- 
ner, of Yale College, who responded to a toast in honor 
of " Tlie Science of Sociology P He said : 

In the present state of the science of sociology the 
man who has studied it at all is very sure to feel great 
self -distrust in trying to talk about it. The most that 



36 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

one of us can do at the present time is to appreciate the 
promise which the science offers to us, and to understand 
the lines of direction in which it seems about to open out. 
As for the philosophy of the subject, we still need the 
master to show us how to handle and apply its most fun- 
damental doctrines. I have the feeling all the time, in 
studying and teaching sociology, that I have not mastered 
it yet in such a way as to be able to proceed in it with 
good confidence in my own steps. I have only got so far 
as to have an almost overpov/ering conviction of the ne- 
cessity and value of the study of that science. 

Mr. Spencer addressed himself at the outset of his 
literary career to topics of sociology. In the pursuit of 
those topics he found himself forced (as I understand it) 
to seek constantly more fundamental and wider philoso23h- 
ical doctrines. He came at last to fundamental principles 
of the evolution philosophy. He then extended, tested, 
confirmed, and corrected these principles by inductions 
from other sciences, and so finally turned again to soci- 
ology, armed with the scientific method which he had ac- 
quired. To .win a powerful and correct method is, as we 
all know, to win more than half the battle. When so 
much is secured, the question of making the discoveries, 
solving the problems, eliminating the errors, and testing 
the results, is only a question of time and of strength to 
collect and master the data. 

We have now acquired the method of studying soci- 
ology scientifically so as to attain to assured results. We 
have acquired it none too soon. The need for a science 
of life in society is urgent, and it is increasing every year. 
It is a fact which is generally overlooked that the great 
advance in the sciences and the arts which has taken place 
during the last century is producing social consequences 
and giving rise to social problems. We are accustomed 
to dwell upon the discoveries of science and the develop- 



PROFESSOR SUMNER'S SPEECH. 37 

ment of the arts as simple incidents, complete in them- 
selves, which offer only grounds for congratulation. But 
the steps which have been won are by no means simple 
events. Each one has consequences which reach beyond 
the domain of physical power into social and moral rela- 
tions, and these effects are multiplied and reproduced by 
combination with each other. The great discoveries and 
inventions redistribute population. They reconstruct in- 
dustries and force new organization of commerce and 
finance. They bring new employments into existence 
and render other employments obsolete, while they change 
the relative value of many others. They overthrow the 
old order of society, impoverishing some classes and en- 
riching others. They render old political traditions gro- 
tesque and ridiculous, and make old maxims of statecraft 
null and empty. They give old vices of human nature a 
chance to parade in new masks, so that it demands new 
skill to detect the same old foes. They produce a kind 
of social chaos in which contradictory social and economic 
phenomena appear side by side to bewilder and deceive 
the student who is not fully armed to deal with them. 
New interests are brought into existence, and new faiths, 
ideas, and hopes, are engendered in the minds of men. 
Some of these are doubtless good and sound ; others are 
delusive ; in every case a competent criticism is of the 
first necessity. In the upheaval of society which is going 
on, classes and groups are thrown against each other in 
such a way as to produce class hatreds and hostilities. 
As the old national jealousies, which used to be the lines 
on which war was waged, lose . their distinctness, class 
jealousies threaten to take their place. Political and so- 
cial events which occur on one side of the globe now 
affect the interests of population on the other side of the 
globe. Forces which come into action in one part of hu- 
man society rest not until they have reached all human 



38 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

society. The brotherhood of man is coming to be a real- 
ity of such distinct and positive character that we find it 
a practical question of the greatest moment what kind of 
creatures some of these hitherto neglected brethren are. 
Secondary and remoter effects of industrial changes, 
which were formerly dissipated and lost in the delay and 
friction of communication, are now, by our prompt and 
delicate mechanism of communication, caught up and 
transmitted through society. 

It is plain that our social science is not on the level 
of the tasks which are thrown upon it by the vast and 
sudden changes in the whole mechanism by which man 
makes the resources of the globe available to satisfy his 
needs, and by the new ideas which are born of the new 
aspects which human life bears to our eyes in consequence 
of the development of science and the arts. Our tradi- 
tions about the science and art of living are plainly inade- 
quate. They break to pieces in our hands when we try 
to apply them to the new cases. A man of good faith 
may come to the conviction sadly, but he must come to 
the conviction honestly, that the traditional doctrines and 
explanations of human life are worthless. 

A progress which is not symmetrical is not true ; that 
is to say, every branch of human interest must be devel- 
oped proportionately to all the other branches, else the 
one which remains in arrears will measure the advance 
which may be won by the whole. If, then, we can not 
produce a science of life in society which is broad enough 
to solve all the new social problems which are now forced 
upon us by the development of science and art, we shall 
find that the achievements of science and art will be over- 
whelmed by social reactions and convulsions. 

We do not lack for attempts of one kind and another 
to satisfy the need which I have described. Our discus- 
sion is in excess of our deliberation, and our deliberation 



PROFESSOR SUMNER'S SPEECH. 39 

is in excess of our information. Our journals, platforms, 
pulpits, and parliaments are full of talking and writing 
about topics of sociology. The only result, however, of 
all this discussion is to show that there are half a dozen 
arbitrary codes of morals, a heterogeneous tangle of eco- 
nomic doctrines, a score of religious creeds and ecclesias- 
tical traditions, and a confused jumble of humanitarian 
and sentimental notions which jostle each other in the 
brains of the men of this generation. It is astonishing to 
watch a discussion and to see how a disputant, starting 
from a given point of view, will run along on one line of 
thought until he encounters some fragment of another 
code or doctrine, which he has derived from some other 
source of education ; whereupon he turns at an angle, 
and goes on in a new course until he finds himself face to 
face with another of his old prepossessions. What we 
need is adequate criteria by which to make the necessary 
tests and classifications, and appropriate canons of pro- 
cedure, or the adaptation of universal canons to the spe- 
cial tasks of sociology. 

Unquestionably it is to the great philosophy which 
has now been established by such ample induction in the 
experimental sciences, and which offers to man such new 
command of all the relations of life, that we must look 
for the establishment of the guiding lines in the study of 
sociology. I can see no boundaries to the scope of the 
philosophy of evolution. That philosophy is sure to em- 
brace all the interests of man on this earth. It will be 
one of its crowning triumphs to bring light and order into 
the social problems which are of universal bearing on all 
mankind. Mr. Spencer is breaking the path for us into 
this domain. We stand eager to follow him into it, and 
we look upon his work on sociology as a grand step in the 
history of science. When, therefore, we express our ear- 
nest hope that Mr. Spencer may have health and strength 



40 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

to bring his work to a speedy conclusion, we not only ex- 
press our personal respect and good-will for himself, but 
also our sympathy with what, I doubt not, is the warmest 
wish of his own heart, and our appreciation of his great 
services to true science and to the welfare of mankind. 



REMARKS OF MR. SCHURZ. 

Mk. Gael Schurz responded to the toast, " The prog- 
ress of science tends to international harmony." He 
said : 

Mr. Chaieman and Gentlemen : Two things which 
fell from the lips of the first two speakers struck me as 
remarkably pertinent to our present situation. One was 
the proverb of the Amazulus, quoted by our worthy 
chairman, that " a stuffed body sees not secret things " ; 
and, great orator as he is, he did not fail to accompany 
the saying with the illustration of example. (Laughter.) 
The other was the remark which formed the text of the 
eloquent address of our honored guest, Mr. SiDcncer, that 
too great continuity and intensity of work, as observed 
in this country, will be apt to break down the best phys- 
ical constitution ; and I am exceedingly sorry to see that, 
in this respect, he himself appears much more like an 
American than like an Englishman. (Great applause.) 
I sincerely hope that, when he returns to his country, he 
will permit his incessant labors for the benefit of hu- 
manity to be sometimes interrupted by due relaxation. 
(Applause.) Profiting from the wisdom we have listened 
to, I shall turn round the Amazulu proverb, and follow 
Mr. Spencer's impressive advice in saying that, in my 
opinion, and according to general experience, any serious 
effort at profound philosophical thought or scientific in- 



REMARKS OF MR. SCHURZ. 41 

quiry, immediately after a good dinner, must be injurious 
to a man's health. (Applause.) Considering that I have 
a family to support, and various other duties to perform, 
which make a vigorous physical condition desirable, I 
shall, whatever others may do, in this respect try to take 
care of myself. (Laughter.) Do not understand me, 
however, as meaning to discourage any one of you, gen- 
tlemen. Everybody must be left to be the judge of 
his own conduct, upon his own responsibility. Herbert 
Spencer never spoke a wiser word than when he said, 
" The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of 
their folly is to fill the world with "—he bluntly said — 
"fools," but I will only say, "with dyspeptic philoso- 
phers." (Laughter and applause.) Leaving, therefore, 
the discussion of deep philosophical and scientific prob- 
lems to others more reckless of their physical well-being, 
I shall prefer to call up some pleasant memories which 
this interesting occasion brings to my mind. Nineteen 
years ago, after the battle of Missionary Ridge and an 
expedition to Knoxville for the relief of Burnside, I was 
with my command in a winter camp near Chattanooga, 
where, for some time, our horses suffered so much from 
want of food that many of them died, and where we had, 
at times, not salt enough to make our meat and crackers 
palatable. But I had Herbert Spencer's " Social Statics " 
with me, which, in the long winter nights in my tent, I 
read by the light of a tallow-candle, and in which I found 
at least an abundance of mental salt to make up for the 
painful absence of the material article. (Applause.) For 
the delightful luxury of thus enjoying quiet philosophical 
meditation at the hand of such a guide, in the midst of 
the scenes of war, I have been grateful to Mr. Spencer 
ever since. (Applause.) Moreover, it became perfectly 
clear to my mind that, if the people of the South had well 
studied and thoroughly digested that book, there would 



42 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

never have been any war for the preservation of slavery 
(applause) — and that, since they had not read and di- 
gested it, it was our bounden duty to hammer the first 
principles of the " Social Statics " — namely, that " every 
man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he in- 
fringes not the equal freedom of any other man " — (ap- 
plause) — into the slaveholders' heads to the best of our 
ability. This was done, and the effect was good. (Ap-*- 
plause.) That first principle is now more and more gen- 
erally understood in this country, and the more generally 
it is appreciated the less occasion there will be for our- 
selves and our descendants to study the " Social Statics " 
in a camp of war again. (Applause.) 

As I am supposed to respond to a sentiment touching 
the influence of the progress of science on the intercourse 
of nations, I may say that it strikes me as a common-sense 
view of the matter — and, as you know, Mr. Chairman, 
common-sense is often the most deceptive disguise of 
ignorance (laughter) — that the effect of that progress 
upon the relations of different peoples is very much the 
same that it is upon the relations of different portions of 
one people, or of different individuals. I shall not disre- 
gard my own warning as to the overstraining of our men- 
tal faculties immediately after dinner when I lay down 
the proposition that — given a certain number of subjects 
of discussion between different nations, or different indi- 
viduals — if the i^rogress of science, or of philosophical en- 
lightenment, increases the number of things upon which 
they agree, it reduces, in the same measure, the number 
of things upon which they disagree (laughter) ; and thus 
it carries them forward in the direction of general good 
understanding and harmony. (Laughter and applause.) 
And if that progress, as is likely to be the case, increases 
the number of subjects of discussion, and teaches us, at 
the same time, how to dispose of them by peaceful and 



REMARKS OF MR. SCIIURZ. 43 

amicable reasoning, it will, to that extent, prevent us 
from coming to blows. (Applause.) These propositions, 
although simple, seem to me conclusive, and I feel very 
much like claiming for them the right of original dis- 
covery. (Laughter.) 

I take it, also, that the end of science and of philoso- 
phy is not merely to enlighten the minds, but also ulti- 
mately to influence the conduct, of men, and not only the 
conduct of a few, but the conduct of the many. And to 
that end it should make itself understood by the many. 
The direct effect upon mankind will grow in strength 
and extent as science and philosophy are poj)ularized in 
the best sense of the term, and thereby become more cos- 
mopolitan. (Applause.) 

There was a time when the investigations of science 
and their results were kept in the possession of privi- 
leged orders or circles, and treated as profound mysteries 
which could not be exposed to the gaze and the under- 
standing of the multitude without profanation and with- 
out endangering the tixed order of society. That time 
lies, fortunately, far behind us. But some of us can remem- 
ber the day when philosophy and science were, by many 
at least, studiously clothed in the darkness of formidable 
terminologies and obscure forms of speech, which seemed 
to warn off all the uninitiated. It was here and there 
considered unprofessional, and it exposed the man of sci- 
ence and the philosopher to the charge of superficiality, 
if he discussed scientific and philosophical subjects in a 
language easily intelligible to the rest of mankind. I 
know of works of that sort professedly written in Ger- 
man, but requiring translation into German almost as 
much as if they had been written in Sanskrit. (Laugh- 
ter.) And of some works written in other languages the 
same might be said. They tell an anecdote of a great 
philosopher who, on his death-bed, complained that of all 



44 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

his pupils only one had understood him, and that one had 
decidedly misunderstood him. (Laughter.) How great 
the misfortune was has probably never been ascertained. 
Perhaps the loss caused by the misunderstanding was not 
without compensation, as I have been told of a philosoph- 
ical book of the obscure kind which was translated from 
one language into another, and some of the original 
thoughts of which were rather improved by the mistakes 
of the intelligent translator. (Laughter.) 

We may certainly congratulate ourselves upon the 
fact that in our days, among men of science and philoso- 
phers, a tendency has grown up to take the generality of 
intelligent mankind into their confidence by speaking to 
them in a human language ; and also a tendency vastly 
to enlarge the range of their immediate usefulness by 
applying the truths discovered by them directly and 
practically to all the relations and problems of actual life. 
(Applause.) And surely it can not be said that, by thus 
being made popular and cosmopolitan, science and phi- 
losophy have lost in depth and become superficial. On 
the contrary, it is an unquestionable fact that the same 
period which is marked by the popularization of science 
and philosophy is equally remarkable for its wonderful 
fertility in scientific discovery, mechanical invention, and 
philosophical generalization of the highest value. (Ap- 
plause.) We have gained in depth and surface at the 
same time. (Applause.) Kor is this at all surprising. 
For, the greater the number of minds that are reached by 
new ideas, the greater will be the quantity and variety 
of new intellectual forces that w^ill be inspired and stimu- 
lated into creative activity. (Applause.) 

I am confident, gentlemen, I express your sentiments 
as well as my own when I say that, in the man who to- 
night honors and delights us with his presence, we greet 
one of the greatest representatives of that democratic 



ADDRESS or PROFESSOR MARSH. 45 

tendency (applause) ; one of the boldest leaders of that 
pliilosophy that bursts the bonds of the closet (applause) ; 
one of the foremost builders up of science in the largest 
sense by establishing the relations of facts (applause) ; 
the apostle of the principle of evolution, which Darwin 
showed in the diversity of organic life, but which Spencer 
unfolded as a universal law governing all physiological, 
mental, and social phenomena (applause) ; a hero of 
thought (great applause), devoting his powers and his 
life to the vindication of the divine right of science against 
the intolerant authority of traditional belief (applause) ; 
an indefatigable diver into the profoundest depths of 
ideas and things, who has also known how to bring the 
discovered treasures within the reach of every intelligent 
mind (applause), and who has thus become one of the 
great teachers, not merely of a school, but of civilized 
humanity. (Applause.) 

Among us he has come in search of rest and recreation, 
and I trust it will be to him a cheering satisfaction to 
know that, far from being a stranger with us, he has even 
among this youngest and busiest and most nervous of 
peoples, multitudes of devoted pupils and admirers, of 
whom the friends here present are a respectful but only 
a feeble representation. (Applause.) 



ADDRESS OF PKOFESSOR MARSH. 

Me. Evarts next called upon Professor O. C. Marsh, 
of Yale College, acting president of the National Acad- 
emy of Sciences, to respond to the following toast : 
^' Bivolution — once an Hypothesis^ now the Established 
Doctrine of the Scientific WorkV Professor Marsh 
said : 



46 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : In meeting here 
to-night, to do honor to our distinguished guest, who is 
one of the great apostles of Evolution, it seems especially 
fitting to the occasion that we should, for a moment at 
least, glance back to the past, and recall briefly the prog- 
ress of a doctrine which has so rapidly brought about a 
revolution in scientific thought. 

Modern science and its methods may be said to date 
back only to the beginning of the present century ; and 
at this time the first scientific theory of organic evolution 
was advanced by Lamarck. During the twenty centuries 
before, a few far-seeing men, from Aristotle to Buffon, 
seem to have had glimpses of the light, but the dense 
ignorance and superstition which surrounded them soon 
enveloped it again in darkness. 

Before the beginning of the present century, it was 
impossible for evolution to find a general acceptance, as 
the amount of scientific knowledge then accumulated was 
too small to sustain it. Hence, the various writers be- 
fore Lamarck who had suggested hypotheses of develop- 
ment had based them upon general reasoning, or upon 
facts too scanty to withstand the objections naturally 
urged against new ideas. 

With the opening of the nineteenth century, however, 
the new era in science began. Here, at the very begin- 
ning, the names of Cuvier and Lamarck stand forth pre- 
eminent ; and the progress of natural science from that 
day to the present is largely due to their labors. Cuvier 
laid the foundation of the study of vertebrate animals, 
living and extinct, but with all his vast knowledge he v/as 
enslaved by the traditions of the past. Although the evi- 
dence was before him, pointing directly to evolution, he 
gave the authority of his great name in favor of the per- 
manence of species. 

Lamarck made a special study of invertebrate animals, 



ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR MARSH. 4Y 

and his investigations soon led him to the belief that liv- 
ing species were descended from those now extinct. In 
this conclusion he found the germ of a theory of develop- 
ment, which he advocated earnestly and philosophically, 
and thus prepared the way for the doctrine of evolution, 
as we know it to-day. 

The methods of scientific investigation introduced by 
Cuvier and Lamarck had already brought to light a vast 
array of facts which could not otherwise have been ac- 
cumulated, and these rendered the establishment of the 
doctrine of evolution for the first time possible. But the 
time was not yet ripe. Cuvier opposed the new idea 
with all his authority. The great contest between him 
and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the strongest advocate of La- 
marck's views, is well known. Authority, which in the 
past had been so powerful in defense of tradition and creed, 
still held sway, and, through its influence, evolution was 
pronounced to be without foundation. This triumph of 
Cuvier delayed the progress of evolution for half a century. 

During this period, however, the advance in all de- 
partments of science was constant, and the mass of facts 
brought together was continually suggesting new lines of 
research, and new solutions of old problems. In geology, 
the old idea of catastrophes was gradually replaced by 
that of uniform changes still in progress ; but the corol- 
lary to this proposition, that life, also, had been continu- 
ous on the earth, was as yet only suggested. In the phys- 
ical world the great law of the correlation of forces had 
been advanced, and received with favor ; but, in the or- 
ganic world, the miraculous creation of each separate 
species was firmly believed by the great mass of educated 
men. The very recent appearance of man on the earth 
and his creation independent of the rest of the animal 
kingdom were scarcely questioned at the close of the first 
half of the present century. 



48 THE SPENCEE BANQUET. 

When the second half of the century began, the accu- 
mulation of scientific knowledge was sufficient for the 
foundation of a doctrine of evolution which no authority 
could suppress and no objections overthrow. The ma- 
terials on which it was to be based were not preserved 
alone in the great centers of scientific thought, but a 
thousand quiet workers in science, many of them in re- 
mote localities, had now the facts before them to suggest 
a solution of that mystery of mysteries, the Origin of 
Species. 

In the first decade of the present half-century, Darwin, 
Wallace, Huxley, and our honored guest, were all at the 
same time working at one problem, each in his own way, 
and their united efforts have firmly established the truth 
of organic evolution. Our guest to-night did not stop to 
solve the difficulties of organic evolution, but, with that 
profound philosophic insight which has made him read and 
honored by all intelligent men, he made the grand gen- 
eralization that the law of organic progress is the law of 
all progress. To show how clearly, even in the begin- 
ning, he comprehended this great truth, let me recall to 
you one sentence which he wrote five-and-twenty years 
ago: 

" This law of organic progress is the law of all prog- 
ress. Whether it be in the development of the earth, in 
the development of life upon its surface, in the develop- 
ment of society, of government, of manufactures, of com- 
merce, of language, literature, science, art, this same evo- 
lution of the simple into the complex, through a process 
of continuous differentiation, holds throughout." 

How completely the truth of this statement has since 
been established you all know full well. 

The evolution of life and of the physical world are 
now supplemented by the evolution of philosophy, of his- 
tory, of society, and of all else pertaining to human life, 



ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR MARSH. 49 

until we may say that evolution is the law of all prog- 
ress, if not the key to all mysteries. These profounder 
departments of evolution I leave to others, for, in the 
few minutes allotted to me, I can not attempt to give 
even an outline of the progress of evolution in biology 
alone. 

If, however, I may venture to answer briefly the ques- 
tion, What of evolution to-day ? I can only reply : the 
battle has been fought and won. A few stragglers on 
each side may still keep up a scattered fire, but the con- 
test is over, and the victors have moved on to other 
fields. 

As to the origin of species, once thought to be the key 
to the position, no working naturalist of to-day who sees 
the great problems of life opening one after another be- 
fore him will waste time in discussing a question already 
solved. This question, so long regarded as beyond solu- 
tion, has been worked out by that greatest of naturalists, 
whose genius all intelligent men now recognize, and 
whose recent loss the whole civilized world deplores. 

Not only do we know to-day that species are not per- 
manent, but every phase of life bears witness to the same 
general law of change. Genera, families, and the higher 
groups of animals and plants are now regarded merely as 
convenient terms to mark progress, which may be altered 
by any new discovery. 

All existing life on the earth is now believed to be 
connected directly with that of the distant past, and one 
problem to-day is to trace out the lines of descent. Here 
embryology and paleontology work together, and the re- 
sults already secured are most important. The genealo- 
gies of some of the animals now living have been made 
out with a degree of certainty that amounts to a demon- 
stration, and others must rapidly follow. 

In this, and in all other departments of natural science, 



50 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

the doctrine of evolution has brought light out of dark- 
ness, and marks out the path of future progress. What 
the law of gravitation is to astronomy, the law of evolu- 
tion is now to natural science. Evolution is no longer a 
theory, but a demonstrated truth, accepted by naturalists 
throughout the world. 

The most encouraging feature in natural science, in- 
deed, in all science, to-day, is the spirit in which the work 
is carried on. No authority is recognized which forbids 
the investigation of any question, however profound ; 
and, with that confidence which success justly brings, no 
question within the domain of science is now believed to 
be insoluble ; not even the grand problems now before 
us — ^the antiquity of the hu,man race, the origin of man, 
or even the origin of life itself. 



MR. FISKE'S SPEECH. 

Mk. Evarts then announced as the next toast : " E'do- 
lution and Religion : that which perfects humanity can 
not destroy religion^'' to which, as it was a double toast, 
he said there would be a duet of speakers to respond. 
The first of these was Mr. John Fiske, of Cambridge, 
who spoke as follows : 

Me. President and Gentlemen : The thought which 
you have uttered suggests so many and such fruitful 
themes of discussion, that a whole evening would not suf- 
fice to enumerate them, while to illustrate them properly 
would seem to require an octavo volume rather than a talk 
of six or eight minutes, especially when such a talk comes 
just after dinner. The Amazulu saying which you have 
cited, that those who have " stuffed bodies " can not see 
hidden things, seems peculiarly applicable to any attempt 



- ME. FISKE'S SPEECH. 51 

to discuss the mysteries of religion at the present mo- 
ment ; and, after the additional warning we have just 
had from our good friend Mr. Schurz, I hardly know 
whether I ought to venture to approach so vast a theme. 
There are one or two points of signal importance, how- 
ever, to which I may at least call attention for a mo- 
ment. It is a matter which has long since taken deep 
hold of my mind, and I am glad to have a chance to say 
something about it on so fitting an occasion. We have 
met here this evening to do homage to a dear and noble 
teacher and friend, and it is well that we should choose 
this time to recall the various aspects of the immortal 
work by which he has earned the gratitude of a world. 
The work which Herbert Spencer has done in organizing 
the different departments of human knowledge, so as to 
present the widest generalizations of all the sciences in a 
new and wonderful light, as flowing out of still deeper 
and wider truths concerning the universe as a whole ; the 
great number of profound generalizations which he has 
established incidentally to the pursuit of this main ob- 
ject ; the endlessly rich and suggestive thoughts which he 
has thrown out in such profusion by the wayside all along 
the course of this great philosophical enterprise — all this 
work is so manifest that none can fail to recognize it. It 
is work of the caliber of that which Aristotle and IN'ew- 
ton did ; though coming in this latter age, it as far sur- 
passes their work in its vastness of performance as the 
railway surpasses the sedan-chair, or as the telegraph sur- 
passes the carrier-pigeon. 

But it is not of this side of our teacher's work that I 
wish to speak, but of a side of it that has, hitherto, met 
with less general recognition. There are some people 
who seem to think that it is not enough that Mr. Spen- 
cer should have made all these priceless contributions to 
human knowledge, but actually complain of him for not 



52 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

giving us a complete and exhaustive system of theology 
into the bargain. What I wish, therefore, to point out 
is that Mr. Spencer's work on the side of religion will be 
seen to be no less important than his work on the side of 
science, when once its religious implications shall have 
been fully and consistently unfolded. 

If we look at all the systems or forms of religion of 
which we have any knowledge, we shall find that they 
differ in many superficial features. They differ in many 
of the transcendental doctrines which they respectively 
preach, and in many of the rules of conduct which they 
respectively lay down for men's guidance. They assert 
different things about the universe, and they enjoin or 
prohibit different kinds of behavior on the part of their 
followers. The doctrine of the Trinity, which to many 
Christians is the most sacred of mysteries, is to all Mu- 
hammadans the foulest of blasphemies ; the Brahman's 
conscience would be more troubled if he were to kill a 
cow by accident than if he were to swear to a lie or steal 
a purse ; the Turk, who sees no wrong in bigamy, would 
shrink from the sin of eating pork. But, amid all such 
surface differences, we find throughout all known relig- 
ions two points of substantial agreement. And these two 
points of agreement will be admitted by modern civilized 
men to be of far greater importance than the innumerable 
differences of detail. All religions agree in the two fol- 
lowing assertions, one of which is of speculative and one 
of which is of ethical import. One of them serves to sus- 
tain and harmonize our thoughts about the world we live 
in and our place in that world ; the other serves to up- 
hold us in our efforts to do each what we can to make 
human life more sweet, more full of goodness and beauty, 
than we find it. The first of these assertions is the prop- 
osition that the things and events of the world do not 
exist or occur blindly or irrelevantly, but that all, from 



MR. FISKE'S SPEECH. 53 

the beginning to the end of time, and throughout the 
furthest sweep of illimitable space, are connected to- 
gether as the orderly manifestations of a divine Power, 
and that this divine Power is something outside of our- 
selves, and upon it our own existence from moment to 
moment depends. The second of these assertions is the 
proposition that men ought to do certain things, and 
ought to refrain from doing certain other things ; and 
that the reason why some things are wrong to do and 
other things are right to do is in some mysterious but 
very real way connected with the existence and nature 
of this divine Power, which reveals itself in every great 
and every tiny thing, without which not a star courses 
in its mighty orbit, and not a sparrow falls to the ground. 
Matthew Arnold once summed up these two propositions 
very well when he defined God as "an eternal Power, 
not ourselves, that makes for righteousness." This two- 
fold assertion, that there is an eternal Power that is not 
ourselves, and that this Power makes for righteousness, 
is to be found, either in a rudimentary or in a highly de- 
veloped state, in all known religions. In such religions 
as those of the Eskimos or of your friends the Amazulus, 
Mr. President, this assertion is found in a rudimentary 
shape on each of its two sides — the speculative side and 
the ethical side ; in such religions as Buddhism or Juda- 
ism it is found in a highly developed shape on both its 
sides. But the main point is, that in all religions you 
find it in some shape or other. 

I said, a moment ago, that modern civilized men will 
all acknowledge that this two-sided assertion, in which 
all religions agree, is of far greater importance than any 
of the superficial points in which religions differ. It is 
really of much more concern to us that there is an eternal 
Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness, than 
that such a Power is onefold or threefold in its meta- 



54 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

physical nature, or that we ought not to play cards on 
Sunday, or to eat meat on Friday. No one, I believe, 
will deny so simple and clear a statement as this. But it 
is not only we modern men, who call ourselves enlight- 
ened, that will agree to this. I doubt not even the nar- 
row-minded bigots of days now happily gone by would 
have been made to agree to it if they could have had 
some doggedly persistent Sokrates to cross-question them. 
Calvin was willing to burn Servetus for doubting the doc- 
trine of the Trinity, but I do not suppose that even Cal- 
vin would have argued that the belief in God's threefold 
nature was more fundamental than the belief in his exist- 
ence and his goodness. The philosophical error with him 
was, that he could not dissociate the less important doctrine 
from the more important doctrine, and the fate of the lat- 
ter seemed to him wrapped up with the fate of the former. 
I cite this merely as a typical example. What men in 
past times have really valued in their religion has been 
the universal twofold assertion that there is a God who 
is pleased by the sight of the just man and is angry with 
the wicked every day ; and when men have fought with 
one another, and murdered or calumniated one another 
for heresy about the Trinity or about eating meat on Fri- 
day, it has been because they have supposed belief in the 
non-essential doctrines to be inseparably connected with 
belief in the essential doctrine. In spite of all this, how- 
ever, it is true that in the mind of the uncivilized man 
the great central truths of religion are so densely overlaid 
with hundreds of trivial notions respecting dogma and 
ritual, that his perception of the great central truths is 
obscure. These great central truths, indeed, need to be 
clothed in a dress of little rites and superstitions in order 
to take hold of his dull and untrained intelligence. But 
in proportion as men become more civilized, and learn to 
think more accurately, and to take wider views of life. 



MR. FISKE'S SPEECH. 55 

just SO do they come to value the essential truths of relig- 
ion more highly, while they attach less and less impor- 
tance to superficial details. 

Having thus seen what is meant by the essential truths 
of religion, it is very easy to see what the attitude of the 
doctrine of evolution IkS toward these essential truths. It 
asserts and reiterates them both ; and it asserts them not 
as dogmas handed down to us by priestly tradition, not 
as mysterious intuitive convictions of which we can ren- 
der no intelligible account to ourselves, but as scientific 
truths concerniDg the innermost constitution of the uni- 
verse — truths that have been disclosed by observation and 
reflection, like other scientific truths, and that accordingly 
harmonize naturally and easily with the whole body of 
our knowledge. The doctrine of evolution asserts, as the 
widest and deepest truth which the study of Nature can 
disclose to us, that there exists a Power to which no limit 
in time or space is conceivable, and that all the phenomena 
of the universe, whether they be what we call material 
or what we call spiritual phenomena, are manifestations 
of this infinite and eternal Power. Now, this assertion, 
which Mr. Spencer has so elaborately set forth as a scien- 
tific truth — nay, as the ultimate truth of science, as the 
truth upon which the whole structure of human knowl- 
edge philosophically rests — this assertion is identical with 
the assertion of an eternal Power, not ourselves, that 
forms the speculative basis of all religions. When Car- 
lyle speaks of the universe as in very truth the star-domed 
city of God, and reminds us that through every crystal 
and through every grass-blade, but most through every 
living soul, the glory of a present God still beams, he 
means pretty much the same thing that Mr. Spencer means, 
save that he speaks with the language of poetry, with lan- 
guage colored by emotion, and not with the precise, for- 
mal, and colorless language of science. By many critics 



56 THE SPENX^ER BANQUET. 

who forget that names are but the counters rather than 
the hard money of thought, objections have been raised 
to the use of such a phrase as the Unknowable whereby 
to describe the power that is manifested in every event 
of the universe. Yet, when the Hebrew prophet declared 
that " by him were laid the foundations of the deep," but 
reminded us "Who by searching can find him out?" he 
meant pretty much what Mr. Spencer means when he 
speaks of a Power that is inscrutable in itself, yet is re- 
vealed from moment to moment in every throb of the 
mighty rhythmic life of the universe. 

And this brings me to the last and most important 
point of all. What says the doctrine of evolution with 
regard to the ethical side of this twofold assertion that 
lies at the bottom of all religion ? Though we can not 
fathom the nature of the inscrutable Power that animates 
the world, we know, nevertheless, a great many things 
that it does. Does this eternal Power, then, work for 
righteousness ? Is there a divine sanction for holiness 
and a divine condemnation for sin ? Are the principles 
of right-living really connected with the intimate consti- 
tution of the universe ? If the answer of science to these 
questions be affirmative, then the agreement with religion 
is complete, both on the speculative and on the practical 
sides ; and that phantom which has been the abiding ter- 
ror of timid and superficial minds — that phantom of the 
hostility between religion and science — is exorcised now 
and for ever. 

Now, science began to return a decisively affirmative 
answer to such questions as these when it began, with Mr. 
Spencer, to explain moral beliefs and moral sentiments as 
products of evolution. For clearly, when you say of a 
moral belief or a moral sentiment that it is a product of 
evolution, you imply that it is something which the uni- 
verse through untold ages has been laboring to bring 



MR. FISKE'S SPEECH. 57 

forth, and you ascribe to it a value proportionate to the 
enormous effort that it has cost to produce it. Still more, 
when with Mr. Spencer we study the principles of right- 
living as part and parcel of the whole doctrine of the de- 
velopment of life upon the earth ; when we see that in 
an ultimate analysis that is right which tends to enhance 
fullness of life, and that is wrong which tends to detract 
from fullness of life — we then see that the distinction be- 
tween right and wrong is rooted in the deepest founda- 
tions of the universe ; we see that the very same forces, 
subtle, and exquisite, and profound, which brought upon 
the scene the primal germs of life and caused them to 
unfold, which through countless ages of struggle and 
death have cherished the life that could live more per- 
fectly and destroyed the life that could only live less per- 
fectly, until humanity, with all its hopes, and fears, and 
aspirations, has come into being as the crown of all this 
stupendous work — we see that these very same subtle and 
exquisite forces have wrought into the very fibers of the 
universe those principles of right-living which it is man's 
highest function to put into practice. The theoretical 
sanction thus given to right-living is incomparably the 
most powerful that has ever been assigned in any phi- 
losophy of ethics. Human responsibility is made more 
strict and solemn than ever, when the eternal Power that 
lives in every event of the universe is thus seen to be in 
the deepest possible sense the author of the moral law 
that should guide our lives, and in obedience to which 
lies our only guarantee of the happiness which is incor- 
ruptible — which neither inevitable misfortune nor un- 
merited obloquy can ever take away. 

I have here but barely touched upon a rich and sug- 
gestive topic. When this subject shall once have been 
expounded and illustrated with due thoroughness — as I 
earnestly hope it will be within the next few years — then 



58 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

I am sure it will be generally acknowledged tliat our 
great teacher's services to religion have been no less sig- 
nal than his services to science, unparalleled as these have 
been in all the history of the world. 



MR. BEECHER'S REMARKS. 

The old New England churches used to have two 
ministers ; one was considered as a doctor of theology, 
and the other a revivalist and pastor. The doctor has 
had his day, and you now have the revivalist. (Laugh- 
ter.) Paul complained that Alexander the coppersmith 
did him much harm. Mr. Spencer has done immense 
harm. I don't believe that there is an active, thoughtful 
minister in the United States that has not been put in a 
peck of troubles, and a great deal more than that, by the 
intrusion of his views, and the comparison of them with 
the old views. I can not for the life of me reconcile his 
notions with those of St. Augustine. I can't get along 
with Calvin and Spencer both. (Laughter.) Sometimes 
one of them is uppermost, and sometimes the other 
(laughter), and I have often been disposed to let them 
light it out themselves, and not take any hand in the 
scrape. (Laughter.) It is to be borne in mind that when 
a man is driving a team of fractious horses that are just 
all that he can manage anyhow, he is not in a state of 
mind to discuss questions with his wife by his side, who 
is undertaking to bring up delicate domestic matters. 
(Laughter.) A man that has a bald-headed deacon 
watching everything that he does, or a gold-spectacled 
lawyer — not a fat one (looking at Mr. Bristow), but a 
long, lean, lank one (looking at Mr. Evarts, amid great 



MR. BEECEER'S REMARKS. 59 

laughter) — can't afford to talk Spencerism from the pul- 
pit ; he has got to take care of himself first (laughter), and 
he must therefore not be expected to come in like an equi- 
noctial storm : he will rather come in like a drizzle (laugh- 
ter) ; he will descend as the dew. (Laughter.) But one 
thing is very certain — Mr. Spencer is coming ; whether 
men want to have him or not, he is coming. Well, he has 
come ; he has come to stay. Mr. Spencer may have dys- 
pepsia, but his books have got no dyspepsia. (Applause.) 
They like the climate (laughter), and they are working 
their way very steadily, without any regard to those 
dietetic or nervous or nervine considerations which he has 
been kind enough to propose to us here to-night. Those 
books can work day and night everyv/here, all over the 
continent, and never grow any thinner. By-the-by, 
when he speaks about our being so industrious, he speaks 
like an insular gentleman. You have very little to do in 
England. You have but about three hundred miles diame- 
ter one way and eight hundred the other. (Laughter). We 
have got this whole continent to take care of. (Laughter.) 
We have to get up early and work late in order to take 
care of it. (Laughter.) We are an ambitious people, and 
we have learned from astronomers that they are five hours 
ahead of us every day in England, and we have to work 
with all our might to make up those five hours. (Laugh- 
ter.) We don't intend to be surpassed by the old people 
on the other side. We are the young people on this side. 
We intend to do as well as they have done, and a little 
better. 

Now let me say, with a little more approach to sobri- 
ety (laughter), what I think about the doctrines of Mr. 
Spencer's philosophy. Not all his admirers or debtors 
or disciples need adopt his conclusions fully. We may 
deem his base-line to be correct, and yet not be sur- 
prised if here and there parts of his vast field should 



go THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

need to be resiirveyed. But, speaking in general terms, 
I think that the doctrine of evolution and its rela- 
tions to the work of Mr. Spencer — which takes in that, 
but a great deal more besides — to speak in plain lan- 
guage, is going to revolutionize theology from one end 
to the other (applause), and it is going to make good 
walking where we have had very muddy walking hith- 
erto ; it is going to bridge over rivers which we have had 
to wade. There are many points in which the theology 
of the past did well enough for the past, bnt does not 
any more answer the reasonable questions and the moral 
considerations that are brought to bear upon it in our day. 
(Applause.) We are to bear in mind in regard to Script- 
ure, which is the great source of instruction on the part 
of the organized religions of the Christian world, that we 
have there what we all agree in. Some points have al- 
ready been made in regard to it. Paul speaks of his idea 
of what the whole drift of Christianity was. It was a 
system to make men. That is what it was. lie said. To 
some He gave apostles and prophecies, and evangelists 
and teachers, for the perfecting of tlie saints, that they 
may become perfect men in Christ, or upon the model of 
Christ Jesus. The New Testament idea is that religion 
is the art of putting men on to an anvil and hammering 
them out into perfect manhood ; now, there is no diiier- 
ence between that tendency in Mr. Spencer's work or Mr. 
Darwin's, or any other of that galaxy of eminent writers 
that shine in the east — there is no difference between 
them and us on that subject. Then, on the other hand, 
taking that for the ideal, that the whole business of relig- 
ion is not merely to insure a man against fire in the other 
world, but to create an insurable interest in him (laughter), 
the business before men is the making of themselves while 
they are making also the world in which they dwell, 
building up society, bringing that day when the very 



MR. BEECHER'S REMARKS. (31 

wilderness shall bud and blossom as the rose ; making 
manhood — ethics, in short, of the building kind. And in 
that regard the morality which is taught in Mr. Spencer's 
work is entirely in agreement with the great morality 
that is taught in the sacred Scriptures. Men forget that 
the Scripture itself — and it ought to have dawned on 
the minds of the men who are so afraid it will be de- 
stroyed — is itself a proof of evolution. There is no 
fact more absolutely patent than that every moral idea 
from the opening of Genesis, right straight through 
the period in Judges and down to the New Testament 
day — every one of the great moral ideas rose like a star, 
and did not shine like a sun until ages had given it ascen- 
sion. (Applause.) The very conception of the divine 
nature begins at daylight and goes on to sunrise and to 
meridian brightness ; and all the doctrines of duties and 
relations in the Old Testament — they are all of them pro- 
gressive from the beginning down clear through to the 
end. The doctrine of immortality was not known in the 
Old Testament day. Here we have Professor Park, of 
Andover, and a great many good and godly men in New 
England, discussing to-day whether a man who don't 
believe that everybody that dies impenitent will be 
damned for ever and ever — whether he is fit to preach the 
gospel ; and yet for more than five thousand years there 
was not a man living on the face of the earth that knew 
there even was a future. (Applause.) We have the ex- 
plicit declaration in the New Testament that life and 
immortality were brought to light by Christ. For more 
than five thousand years men did not know anything fit 
to preach, according to the modern notion. 

But look at the great question of the origin of men. 
It is a hypothesis that we are but the prolongation of 
an inferior animal tribe, and there are many evidences 
among men that it is so. (Laughter.) I can almost 



Q2 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

trace the very lines on which some men have come 
down. (Laughter.) It is said that we descend from the 
immortal monkey ; but that is not the truth that is 
taught, as I understand it, in the books. You have got to 
go a great way farther back than that before you find 
your grandfather. (Laughter.) Apes came down from 
the same starting-point, working toward bone and muscle, 
and we came down on the other side, working toward 
nerve and brain. A great many people are loath to think 
that such an origin should be hinted at by science, that 
it should stand even as a hypothesis. I would just as 
lief have descended from a monkey as from anything 
else if I had descended far enough. (Laughter.) But 
let men have come from where they will, or how they 
may have come, one thing is very certain, that the hu- 
man race began at the bottom and not at the top, or 
else there is no truth in history or religion ; and that 
the unfolding of the human race has been going on, if 
not from the absolute animal conditions, yet from the 
lowest possible savage conditions ; and the Jewish legend 
that men were at the top, and then fell from the top to 
the bottom, and carried down all their posterity with 
them, and that God's business has been for eight, ten, 
twenty thousand years, and how many more I know not, 
the punishing of men for sins they never committed — well, 
that has got to go. (Applause.) It will not be twenty 
years before a man will be ashamed to stand up in any 
intelligent pulpit and mention it. (Applause.) On the 
other hand, see what light is thrown upon Divine Provi- 
dence. According to the old theology, one single person 
was sorted out, an emigrant, and the whole of the divine 
thought was centered on him and on his posterity, and 
all the collateral races of every kind were left without 
a temple, without a book, without a priest, without a 
Sabbath, without a sacrifice, without an altar, without 



MR. BEECHER'S REMARKS. 63 

anything, while he brought uj) one single family ; and 
what a family ! (Laughter.) And what bringing up ! 
(Laughter.) What a means of grace it was to have had 
those twelve patriarchs ! Those men in modern society 
could not have lived, with the exception, perhaps, of one or 
two of them ; they could not have lived — outside of Sing 
Sing (laughter) — unless they went into politics. (Laugh- 
ter.) They went down to Egypt and there they were 
abandoned to slavery for four hundred years. What was 
done for them ? Nothing. They came out of Egypt, and, 
passing forty years through the wilderness, came into the 
eastern line of Palestine and took possession, by the 
sword, of the land, slaughtering the inhabitants, and, for 
four hundred years there was an interregnum again, until 
we come down to the time of Samuel, and then after that 
there is no continuity of organized government. The 
hiatus between one period and another, the interregnum 
periods, when you come to put them together, negative 
the current and conventional conception of the nature of 
the special tutelary administration of God over a chosen 
people, relieving them from the operation of the laws of 
social progress. On the other hand, when you come to 
look at the actual facts and take the whole human family, 
they have been steadily and gradually unfolding, some 
with greater rapidity and some less. Some were more in- 
capable of thought than others ; some were stronger in 
hand and tarried by the way to fight ; but on the whole 
the world has been, with unequal speed, advancing from 
the earliest period down to the present time. It is a great 
deal more consonant with any rational idea of an over- 
ruling Providence and a divine justice than that which 
belonged to the old theologies. 

Then comes the question of sin. I am taught by 
Augustine and Calvin, and all of the mediceval preachers, 
that there are two sorts of sin— one is original sin— I 



51 THE SrENCER BANQUET. 

have always been original enougli to have my own sin 
(laughter) — but that we were all under conditions of guilt, 
wrath, and penalty, on account of the transgression of 
Adam and Eve, I don't know how many thousand years 
ago ; that the guilt of their inexperience — their transac- 
tion in the garden of Eden — ran clear down through 
the thousands of years, and included every child that 
was born from that time to this. Now, what is the the- 
ory that comes on the other hand, on the side of sci- 
ence ? It is the theory that man is first an animal pure 
and simple, and that by the breathing of the breath of 
G9d into him there is the unfolding gradually of a ra- 
tional soul, an intellectual capacity, a moral and a spir- 
itual nature, and that while he was an animal the exercise 
of selfishness, of plunder, of combativeness and destruc- 
tiveness, was the law of his being ; and then it was not 
only a necessity, but the act was a virtue ; but by gradual 
development he has come to the possession of those higher 
qualities which should rule him. Sin lies in the contlict 
between animal nature and the dawning of the spiritual, 
moral, and intellectual nature. It is the conflict in a man 
between his upper and lower nature. If you want to see 
that taught thoroughly, goto seventh Romans and see how 
Paul argues the matter. He says : " The things I would do, 
I do not ; the things I would not do, I do. So, then, it is 
not I," he says, " but sin that dwelleth in me. I find a 
law in my members." He was almost fit to be a minister 
to Darwin. *' I find a law in my members that compels 
me to sin, but that I in which my personal identity is, 
the I that thinks, the i"that perceives, that aspires, the 
flash of imagination (which he calls faith), the whole frui- 
tion of a great soul that approves the spiritual law, the 
manly law : whatever is right, pure, just, beautiful — I see 
that, but I am all the time doing the other. My under 
man, my physical man, is fighting against the upper man." 



MR. BEECHER'S REMARKS. 65 

There isn't a man here but knows that is so. Every even- 
ing rebukes every morning among the whole of you. 
You go out in the morning with inspiration and noble 
feeling, and say, " This day I will cheat nobody," and 
you come back at night and you have cheated a dozen 
men. (Laughter.) And so on through the whole scale 
of conduct. Great light is thrown, by this truly scien- 
tific and truly scriptural view, on the subject of the 
nature of sin. I might go on and show that in many 
other ways religious teaching is greatly benefited by 
the light that is coming on the world from the great 
thinkers of the day. Now men say, Will you abandon 
revelation ? No. We all believe, that believe in Moses, 
that God wrote on stone. I believe that that was not the 
first time he wrote on stone. He made a record when 
he made the granite, and when he made all the suc- 
cessive strata in the periods of time. There is a record 
in geology that is as much a record of God as the record 
on paper in human language. (Applause.) They are 
both true — where they are true. (Laughter.) The record 
of matter very often is misinterpreted, and the record of 
the letter is often misinterpreted ; and you are to en- 
lighten yourselves by knowing both of them and inter- 
l^reting them one by the other ; and it is no more a quar- 
rel between science and religion, between the Bible and 
philosophy, than a discussion over family matters is a 
quarrel between the husband and the wife ; it is simply a 
thorough adjustment of affairs. (Laughter.) 

Gentlemen, we have had a good time here to-night, too 
much of it, especially for a man like me, that can't eat be- 
cause he has got a speech to make. We shall very soon 
break up. It is not our privilege to meet Mr. Spencer 
face to face as we all would be glad to do ; I certainly 
would. I don't know of a man living with whom, if I 
might sit down in the shade of the evening, in quiet, and 



QQ THE SPEXCER BANQUET. 

bring up my crude thought, my vagrant imagination, and 
avail myself of superior experience and thought — I know 
of no man now living with whom I should feel more hon- 
ored and more pleased in communing than with him. It 
is not in my nature to derive benefit from any mortal soul 
and forget the obligation. I feel in my pulse a longing 
that goes back to the early days, to Homer, and comes 
down through the whole catalogue of noble writers who 
have written that which the world has thought worth pre- 
serving ; and every man that comes up in our day, and 
whose writings fortify me and strengthen me — I would 
fain carry some tribute of affection to him. I began to 
read Mr. Spencer's works more than twenty years ago. 
They have been meat and bread to me. They have 
helped me through a great many difficulties. I desire 
to own my obligation personally to him, and to say 
that if I had the fortune of a millionaire, and I should 
pour all my gold at his feet, it would be no sort of 
compensation compared to that which I believe I owe 
him ; for whoever gives me a thought that dispels the 
darkness that hangs over the most precious secrets of 
life, whoever gives me confidence in the destiny of my 
fellow-men, whoever gives me a clearer stand-point 
from which I can look to the great silent One, and 
hear him even in half, and believe in him, not by 
the tests of physical science, but by moral intuition — 
whoever gives that power is more to me than even 
my father and my mother ; they gave me an out- 
ward and a physical life, but these others emanci- 
pate that life from superstition, from fears, and from 
thralls, and make me a citizen of the universe. (Ap- 
plause.) 

May He who holds the storm in His hand be gracious 
to you, sir ; may your voyage across the sea be pros- 
perous and speedy ; may you find on the other side 



WHAT MR. YOUMANS DID NOT SAY. 07 

all those conditions of health and of comfort which shall 
enable you to complete the great work, greater than any- 
other man in this age has ever attempted ; may you live 
to hear from this continent and from that other, an un- 
broken testimony to the service which you have done to 
humanity ; and thus, if you are not outwardly crowned, 
you wear an invisible crown on your heart that will carry 
comfort to death — and I will greet you beyond ! (Great 
applause.) 



UNSPOKEN' SPEECHES, 



WHAT MR. YOUMANS DID NOT SAY. 

The foregoing addresses had the good fortune to 
get uttered ; but, if the unspoken speeches, which were 
hot for expression on many tongues, could also have 
got vent, they would have consumed the whole night. 
Of the unvoiced communications that were found not 
available at twelve o'clock, notes have been furnished 
of the following. Had Mr. Evarts given the occa- 
sion a length proportional to its other magnitudes, 
and proceeded to offer the following toast, " Spencer's 
Philosophy of Evolution: the most original achievement 
in the history of thought,^^ and then called upon Mr. E. 
L. Youmans, he might have got in response what fol- 
lows : 



68 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : We are here to- 
night to do honor to Herbert Spencer by testifying to 
him and to the world our appreciation of the greatness 
and the importance of his work. There is one trait of 
his intellectual labors which ought not at this time to be 
overlooked, and which has impressed me increasingly as 
I have become familiar with his writings — I refer to their 
originality. I do not here mean the mere originality of 
literary form, nor even that of the pure creative imagina- 
tion, but I mean that far higher originality of construc- 
tive genius which builds new systems of truth out of the 
multitudinous elements of solid knowledge ; and in which 
imagination and reason work together under the inexora- 
ble restraints of logic and of fact. Conforming through- 
out to the rigorous canons of scientific method, Mr. Spen- 
cer has given the world an amount of original exposition 
and of new and valuable truth that are probably without 
a parallel in the history of human thought. 

Professor Marsh has given us an admirable sketch of 
the progress of the doctrine of organic evolution, and has 
justly credited Mr. Spencer with the development of its 
broader applications ; but I wish to illustrate the origin- 
ality of his approach to the subject, and to show how 
completely the working out of the comprehensive theory 
belongs to himself alone. 

In his address as President of the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, at the Saratoga 
meeting three years ago. Professor Marsh observed that 
scientific men now no longer concern themselves about 
the truth of evolution — they assume it, and go on. A 
year or two previously Professor Geikie had said that 
when he was in Germany the biologists remarked to him: 
" You in England are still wrangling over the evidences 
of evolution ; we are far ahead of you — we assume it, and 
go on." Yet it was an Englishman who first took this 



WHAT MR. YOUMAXS DID NOT SAY. 69 

advanced position. It is now exactly thirty years since 
Herbert Spencer published an article in the " Westminster 
Review" on " The Development Hypothesis," in which 
he declared that the scientific evidence was even then 
overwhelming in favor of the theory of the natural and 
gradual evolution of organic life upon this globe. He 
said, in substance, " There is no other hypothesis worth a 
moment's thought, and, as for me, I assume it, and go 
on." 

To know how much this meant at that time, we must 
remember that it was still the epoch of Buffon, Saint- 
Hilaire, Lamarck, and Goethe, when it had begun to be 
vaguely recognized that the significant facts all point one 
way ; but how crude and wild were speculations upon 
the subject, is shown by the fact that the " Vestiges of 
Creation " was the last previous work upon development 
that had attracted general attention, while that work 
simply showed the direction in which men were groping. 
Mr. Spencer entered the field through the gate- way of his 
social studies. The idea of progress in society had been 
simmering in his mind since his first publication of a 
pamphlet, based upon this conception, which he wrote at 
the age of twenty-two ; and its fundamental idea was 
subsequently elaborated in the " Social Statics," published 
in 1850. Two years later, he proclaimed his unqualified 
acceptance of the hypothesis of development in the article 
referred to. 

I first became acquainted with the labors of Herbert 
Spencer twenty-six years ago. I read an able article, in 
a foreign periodical, entitled "Modern English Psychol- 
ogy," which was a review of a work by Mr. Spencer, 
declared by the writer. Dr. J. D. Morell, author of the 
" History of Philosophy," to constitute a new departure 
in the science of mind. I imported the book, and under- 
took to read it, but could not understand it, and, after 



70 THE SPEXCER BANQUET. 

several attempts, threw it aside as hopeless. My sister, 
however, was attracted to the unpromising volume, and 
had the patience, or the curiosity, to keep at it. After a 
time, she began to say : " There is a good deal more in 
that book than you suspect. I have got far enough with 
it to know that it is great stuff, at any rate. It is a very 
original book ; and, if you get at the author's point of 
view, you will find it a new revelation." The work was 
Spencer's " Principles of Psychology," published in 1855. 
And what was the difficulty about it ? Simply this : it 
was a new exposition of the lavrs of mind, based upon 
the principle of evolution. Spencer had assumed the 
truth of the doctrine, and gone on ; and this was the first 
scientific and systematic application of it. He took the 
fundamental position that man with all his faculties has 
been evolved by the slow and continuous operation of 
natural causes. The new point of view consisted in re- 
garding evolution as the key to the constitution of mind. 
Heredity and the gradual modification of organisms, 
through their intercourse with environing nature, were 
the cardinal conceptions of the work. The position 
taken was that it is by experiences registered in the slow- 
ly perfecting nervous system that the mental faculties 
have been gradually evolved through long courses of ge- 
netic descent from the lowest to the highest creatures, 
each generation inheriting all that had been previously 
gained, and adding its own increment to the sum of prog- 
ress. It was maintained that ideas and feelings, thus slowly 
engendered, are transmitted as aj)titudes and capacities ; 
while the intuitions of thought have arisen in the heredi- 
tary intellect, and the moral sentiments in the hereditary 
conscience of the race. The intuitional and the experi- 
ence hypotheses, over which philosophers had quarreled 
for ages, were here first reconciled. It was shown that 
all knowledge and the very faculties of knowing origi- 



WHAT MR. YOUMANS DID NOT SAY. ^^l 

nate in experience, but that the primary elements of 
thought are a j^riori intuitions to the individual, being 
derived from ancestral experience. 

The absolute originality of this great work has never 
been questioned, and yet it was the first legitimate and 
permanent scientific result of the application of the law 
of evolution. It marks the close of the period of specu- 
lation in regard to this subject, and the opening of the 
new period when it was to become the guide of scien- 
tific inquiry. I maintain that its fundamental doctrine, 
as propounded at that time, was nothing less than a turn- 
ing-point in the thought of the scientific Avorld. A new 
and profounder interpretation had been reached of the 
nature of man and the method of the universe. Twie 
was now first recognized as the supreme factor in the 
production of effects for which it had been formerly sup- 
posed that time was unnecessary. The action of slow- 
working natural agencies in the affairs of this world was 
here first reduced to scientific application. The geolo- 
gists, to be sure, had established the fact of the vast an- 
tiquity of the earth ; but they still clung to the notion of 
miraculous breaks in the course of nature, and they did 
not afiirm the principle of inexorable continuity in the 
causes and effects of natural phenomena. 

I have said that I had difiiculty in mastering this 
work, but in this I v/as not alone. I lent the book to the 
late Dr. Ripley, who could make nothing of it, though 
long trained in German metaphysics, and he was so dis- 
gusted with his failure that he declared he should like to 
throw it at the author's head ! John Stuart Mill also had 
his difiiculties with it. He pronounced it " the finest ex- 
ample we possess of the psychological method in its full 
power," but, strange to say, he resisted its fundamental 
evolutionary conception. He prized the treatise for the 
new light it threw on the processes of mental develop- 



72 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

ment in the individual, but he contested the genesis of 
intuitions through inheritance. He Avas strongly com- 
mitted, as was his father before him, to the view that the 
faculties of the mind originate wholly in individual ex- 
perience. He did not perceive the import of the time- 
element ; all the time he wanted was a life-time. Mill 
maintained that character can be formed in a few years 
through the omnipotence of education, just as orthodoxy 
taught that it can be transformed in a few hours through 
the omnipotence of grace. The error was all-pervading, 
and belonged to the epoch of thought. Governments and 
institutions, it was supposed, could be invented on new 
patterns, and set agoing on the shortest notice. Saint- 
Simon, Fourier, and Comte, as is well known, believed 
that human societies can be manufactured on new princi- 
ples in a very short time, with enormous benefits to man- 
kind ; and it was, in fact, generally considered that all 
social evils can be reformed out of the world in about five 
years, if only everybody would seriously get about it. 

Spencer's "Psychology" was a destructive assault 
upon this whole order of ideas made twenty-seven years 
ago through the first great scientific application of the 
doctrine of evolution. Its fundamental idea was that, as 
men have been but slowly produced, they can be but 
slowly adapted to new conditions ; and that Kature, with 
her deliberate methods, has a vastly larger share in the 
work of human improvement than was formerly recog- 
nized. Not long before his death, Mr. Mill acknowledged 
that the rereading of Spencer's work gave him a new con- 
ception of its import, which he recognized was partially 
due to progress in his own mind ; and in a letter to Dr. 
Carpenter he at last conceded the princiiDle which Mr. 
Spencer many years before, and in advance of all men, 
had made the new basis of the science of mind. We 
thus see how fully Herbert Spencer had taken possession 



WHAT MR, YOUMANS DID NOT SAY. ^3 

and command of a field of thought, even now regarded 
as new, a generation ago. 

It was while writing the "Psychology," in 1854, that 
Mr. Spencer first arrived at the conception of evolution as 
a universal law. The subject now opened up before him 
in all its breadth, and the problems multiplied right and 
left. As all things are constantly undergoing orderly 
changes, what are the common laws of transformation ? 
What the laws of this eternal redistribution of matter 
and motion, with their tendency through countless ages to 
a higher unfolding ? What, in short, are the causes and 
factors, the limits and formula, of the evolutionary proc- 
ess in all the diversities of its operation ? These were 
Herbert Spencer's questions from 1850 to 1860. They 
were problems of science now everywhere recognized as 
legitimate, immanent, and Inevitable. In 1858 he had ar- 
rived at the idea that this universal process of law which 
accounts for the origin, continuance, and disappearance of 
the changing objects around us, is the deepest principle 
we can reach of the method of nature, and must necessitate 
a new organization of knowledge and a new dispensation 
of philosophy. We have here the secret of the original- 
ity that characterizes Spencer's work. Tlie first great 
»tep he had taken compelled it. Whole branches of 
knowledge had to be reinvestigated and remolded in the 
light of an all-comprehensive and reconstructive principle. 
In brief, Mr. Spencer saw that the great advance of mod- 
ern knowledge made it imperative to originate a new or- 
ganon of philosophy, groimded upon science and embody- 
ing throughout the theory of evolution. 

I can not here withhold my humble tribute of admira- 
tion to the courage, the pluck, the heroism of this thinker 
in engaging upon his great task. Everything was against 
him. Single-handed, with no church or party behind him, 
backed by no university or scientific society, v/ith but 



4 



Y4 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

little means, in broken health, without even a publisher, 
and in the face of public prejudice and a hostile press, he 
nevertheless resolved to carry out a comprehensive sys- 
tem of thought that would require twenty years of his 
life. The moral intrepidity of the undertaking was as 
original as its intellectual character. 

Let us now carefully note the progress that Spencer 
had made with the subject of evolution in 1858. Besides 
the "Psychology," printed three years earlier, he had 
written some twenty-five elaborate articles for the lead- 
ing reviews, expounding and applying the doctrine of 
evolution upon a large number of subjects. All these 
articles were, however, anonymous, in accordance with 
review usages at that time, so that he did not get the 
credit of them. But his views upon the whole subject 
were now well ripened, so that he was prepared to give 
them to the world in a systematic form. He accordingly 
drew up a prospectus (1858) of a philosophical system, to 
occupy seven volumes, and embracing the fundamental 
pi'inciples of evolution, and the applications of the doctrine 
to the subjects of life, mind, society, and morality. In 
1859 he revised this programme, extending it to ten vol- 
umes, and giving their detailed contents in logical order, 
under thirty-three consecutive heads. This document 
shows that the doctrine of evolution was carefully and 
maturely elaborated in its proofs, its scientific form, and 
the comprehensive scope of its applications, twenty-three 
years ago, substantially as it stands to-day exemplified in 
his extensive works. 

I must here add that the profound import of his philo- 
sophical system, and how thoroughly he was prepared for 
it, were well known among eminent thinkers at that time. 
Being without resources to maintain himself and publish 
his projected scheme, Mr. Spencer thought of applying to 
the government for some position which he could con- 



WHAT MK. YOUMANS DID NOT SAY. 75 

scientioiisly fill, and the duties of wliich might still allow 
leisure to prosecute his work. He proposed the plan to 
some friends, who offered to second his application. The 
result was, that letters were written by Huxley, Grote, 
Hooker, Mill, Tyndall, and Fraser, concurrently declaring 
that, of all men of the present age, Spencer was pre-emi- 
nently the one to undertake such a comprehensive co- 
ordination of the sciences as he contemplated ; and that 
it would be an honor to any government to promote the 
enterprise. These letters were designed for publication, 
but Mr. Spencer never printed them. They all bear the 
date of 1858. 

The originality of Spencer's achievement is thus vindi- 
cated in its incontestable priority to all other promulga- 
tions of recent evolutionary doctrine. He is the follower 
in this of no man ; he is in advance of every other. It 
may surprise some of you when I state that all I have 
here described of Spencer's work was accomplished be- 
fore Mr. Charles Darwin had ever published a word upon 
the subject. That great naturalist contributed the im- 
portant principle of natural selection to organic evolution 
(as did also Mr. Wallace), in 1859, thus showing how new 
species may originate ; but natural selection is not evolu- 
tion — is but a subordinate part of it — and there has 23rob- 
ably been more conflict over the question of its real value 
as a factor in the process than over any other point in 
relation to it. With the general subject, indeed, as a 
problem of scientific investigation, Mr. Darwin never 
even attempted to deal. It has been currently said since 
his death that he went into the great pantheon of Brit- 
ish immortals as the father and founder of modern evo- 
lution, but those who make such claims do no service to 
his reputation. We have seen what are the facts, and 
even interment in Westminster Abbey can not change 
them. Mr. Darwin will remain the illustrious Keformer 



76 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

of biology and the most distinguished naturalist of the 
age, but with Mr. Spencer will abide the honor of com- 
plete originality in developing this greatest conception 
of modern times, if not, indeed, of all time. 



WHAT MR. WARD WAS READY TO SAY. 

Had the master of the occasion then required Mr. 
Lester F. Ward, of Washington, to speak to the follow- 
ing sentiment, " The True Philosopher — the highest Prod- 
uct of Evolution ^^ Mr. Ward would have remarked : 

Me. Chaikman and Gentlemen : There is a peculiar 
fitness in this testimonial to the great philosopher, now 
the guest of this country, and so soon to leave our shores. 
The occasion is certainly very distinct from nearly all 
others having the same external characteristics. The 
place you have selected is indeed famous for such enter- 
tainments, but too often they are given in honor of mere 
politicians. Such testimonials always involve the prin- 
ciple of a quid pro quo. The individual to be honored 
merely represents power to confer favors upon those who 
honor him. Admiration is moved by self-interest. Very 
different is the present occasion. The recipient of this 
honor holds his high position by virtue of what he has 
done. No political revolution or social cataclysm can 
ever shake it. His fame rests upon ideas, and as com- 
pared with ideas all other foundations are but sand. 

Again, all must feel that it is not merely to a tnoM 
that homage is being done ; it is rather to a great mind 
— a mind that has proved itself capable of grappling suc- 
cessfully with the profoundest problems of the universe. 
It is this brain - power, conceived to a large extent as 



WHAT MR. WARD WAS READY TO SAY. 77 

impersonal, that we would recognize and honor. Mr. 
Spencer's personality is, as it were, swallowed np in his 
intellectuality. He represents no royal line of ancestors, 
bears no titles of honor from great states or great institu- 
tions, but occupies his present exalted place in the eyes of 
the world purely and solely through the force of his intel- 
lect. Unaided by human effort, and from the depths of 
his own mind, he has formulated the laws of the universe, 
not merely in the simpler and better known departments 
of astronomy and physics, but throughout the new and 
unexplored realms of life, mind, and action. It is to this 
achievement that we would do homage, which we do by 
honoring the man — the physical organization through 
which it was accomplished. Thus, at times, we find it 
difficult to think of him as formed of bone and sinew, 
flesh and blood, and contemplate him as the embodiment 
of psychic power. 

For myself, I confess to the great force of this sen- 
timent, occasioned perhaps by a long - continued habit 
of communing with his thoughts, always regarded as 
thoughts, and wholly disconnected from the character of 
their source ; and this spell was scarcely broken by the 
warm grasp of his hand with which, but the other day, 
I was honored. 

Mr. Spencer's pre-eminence as a philosopher rests pri- 
marily upon two qualities, and can only come of the union 
of these in one and the same mind. These qualities are, 
first, his extensive information ; and, second, his extraor- 
dinary causality. The work of the true philosopher is 
pre-eminently the synthesis of extant knowledge. To 
accomplish this work he must possess, on the one hand, 
the greater part of the general knowledge of his age, and, 
on the other, the special faculty required to co-ordinate 
it. Rarely, indeed, are these qualifications combined in 
a single mind. It has been the misfortune of philosophy 



Y8 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

that the most of the truly logical minds have been de- 
plorably lacking in the necessary data upon which to ex- 
ercise their reasoning powers, while many of the minds 
that have taken pains to acquire extensive information 
have proved wholly incapable of making any rational use 
of it. We have, therefore, had logicians and speculators 
on the one hand, and erudites and specialists on the other. 

When Mr. Spencer entered the literary world, the 
great demand of the age was a synthetic philosophy. He 
perceived this, and had the rare gift of seeing his own pe- 
culiar fitness for such an undertaking. This duty seemed 
to devolve uj^on him ; he accepted it, and no one has been 
found to challenge his qualifications to perform it. His 
mastery of all branches of human knowledge has been 
justly styled " encyclopedic." His causality has never been 
equaled. To him were thus secured the two essential con- 
ditions for accomplishing the permanent object of philos- 
ophy — 'the synthesis of science. Without the comprehen- 
sive survey which his laborious investigations have se- 
cured for him, his great combining powers would have 
been profitless ; without those powers no museum of 
facts, however well learned, would have yielded the broad 
principles of a cosmical philosophy. Of the former of 
these statements, not only all the great minds of an- 
tiquity, but such modern names as those of Kant and of 
Hamilton, are obvious examples ; while of the latter the 
life of Humboldt is, perhaps, the most conspicuous proof ; 
although, within more restricted limits, the scientific 
world offers a multitude of instances in which the ca- 
pacity for observation vastly transcends the power of 
co-ordination. 

In his grasp of other truths Mr. Spencer has not 
failed to comprehend this one. It is he himself who has 
said (and both the language and the thought belong to 
the anthology of our tongue) that " only when Genius is 



WHAT MR. WARD WAS READY TO SAY. 79 

married to Science can the highest results be produced." 
And, if we rescue the word genius from that bastard syn- 
onymy with monomania to v»^hich modern usage threat- 
ens to condemn it, we find that in him these two fertile 
attributes are united with all the constancy and sanctity 
of wedlock. 

If I might be permitted to hint at the precise direc- 
tion from which Mr. Spencer's great labors most strongly 
appeal to my mind, I should do so by intimating the 
possibility that he himself may fail to appreciate their 
full scope and influence. Emerson, one of whose wise 
sayings Mr. Spencer has embodied in his own remarks, 
has said of the world's greatest artist that — 

" He builded better than he knew." 

May it not be that the world's greatest philosopher has 
also " builded better than he knew " ? May it not be that 
in telling us what society is, and how it became such, he 
has unconsciously pointed out the way in which it may 
be made better ? In laying down the principles according 
to which social phenomena take place in nature, may he 
not have rendered possible, in the near future, some prac- 
tical applications of those principles to higher social 
needs ? I venture to predict that, in thus building the 
science of Sociology^ Mr. Spencer has prepared the way 
for the introduction, on the basis of that science, of the 
corresponding art of Sociocracy. 



80 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

WHAT MR. LELAND GOT KO CHANCE TO 

SAY. 

Had Mr. Evarts still persevered, and given the toast, 
'''Evolution : no empty abstraction, hut a guiding ^:)r^?^c^- 
2)le in 2^'i^cictical life^'' Mr. E. R. Leland, of New York, 
would have cheerfully responded, however late, as fol- 
lows : 

Mr. Chairman a:n^d Gentlemen : It would not be 
easy, even if it were possible, for me to add to the com- 
pleteness of the able and eloquent discussions which have 
gone before as to the position of the doctrine of evolu- 
tion ; its bearing upon the problems of society and na- 
tion-making ; its relations to religion and education ; but 
I am glad of an opportunity to pay my humble tribute to 
Mr. Sj)encer, to whom, in common with many, I owe a 
very great debt. In attempting this task I labor under 
the disadvantage that making remarks in public has nev- 
er been any part of my business. I am not accustomed 
even to think in the terms used by philosophers, mor- 
alists, and scientific men ; for, like many others here, I 
am for the most part engaged in obeying the admonition 
of Bacon, who says, in effect. While philosophers are dis- 
cussing as to whether the pursuit of pleasure or virtue is 
the greatest good, let it be your business to secure that 
which makes either possible. It is not bad advice, pro- 
vided it be not followed too long and eagerly, but this 
egoistic pursuit is apt sadly to interfere with the acquisi- 
tion of that learning which Mr. Spencer has just told us 
is for the uses of life. 

For years, however, I have been an admirer and dis- 
ciple of Mr. Spencer, and his books have been my com- 
panions. They are not usually regarded as easy reading, 
but rather are popularly supposed to answer pretty nearly 



WHAT MR. LELAND GOT NO CHANCE TO SAY. 81 

to Thoreau's definition of good books — " books that no 
intelligence can understand ; that an idle man can not 
read, and a timid man dare not." But here, as elsewhere, 
it needs but a little application to prove the truth of 
D'Alembert's maxim, " Go on, and the light will come to 
you." 

There is a feeling, not uncommon, that the doctrine 
of evolution is concerned chiefly with matters that have 
but a distant connection with the affairs of every-day 
life. It is generally supposed that it relates principally 
to the development of systems and of worlds, to the ori- 
gin of species, to the unity of creeds, and the various im- 
portant but formidable subjects upon which it is consid- 
ered safer and more comfortable for laymen to have 
teachers and experts to do their thinking for them. But 
Mr. Spencer, in his kindly criticism and sound advice to- 
night, and in the expression of his views which has recent- 
ly appeared in the papers, shows plainly enough that, so 
far from dwelling in an atmosphere too rare for ordinary 
mortals, the bent of his genius is thoroughly practical ; 
and it requires no profound study of his system to learn 
that, however vast may be its scope, it is founded upon 
laws that have been discovered and studied by the aid of 
tangible and common facts, with which all are familiar ; 
so familiar that their true significance has remained un- 
seen until pointed out by the great thinker whom we 
honor to-night. Not only is evolution based upon and 
illustrated by simple and familiar facts, but its applica- 
tions are made to the sort of problems that are daily pre- 
sented to us. It would be too much to say that it pro- 
vides a formula that in unskilled hands will solve them 
all ; but it does help to classify and explain phenomena 
that are constantly coming to the notice of workers in 
every department of life, and the lessons that it teaches 
are those which even business-men must need to learn. 



82 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

The contemiDt for theorizing which men who pride 
themselves upon being practical often express, is well 
known. It arises usually from a misconception, from 
confounding vagaries with theories, for it is a somewhat 
stale truism that the success of these men — and they are 
usually successful — is due to the care which they give to 
working out or adapting sound theories. What I wish 
here to call attention to is, that this contempt is not con- 
sistently held even by the men who avow it. Nothing is 
more common than for them to give nominal adherence 
to doctrines (theories) that are wholly inconsistent with 
the methods by which they regulate their business ; they 
regularly listen and assent to teachings which if practical- 
ly followed would bring immediate and utter confusion 
to their affairs ; they subscribe to doctrines, as to the dis- 
tribution of wealth, for example, that Professor Sumner 
would find a rather unstable foundation upon which to 
base a theory of economy ; they aver their belief in mir- 
acles, but, in the provision of a feast like the one before 
us, they feel it safer to trust Mr. Delmonico than a caterer 
who would in any degree depend upon supernatural agen- 
cies to furnish the loaves and fishes, or the wine and ci- 
gars. 

But this diametrical opposition between creeds and 
conduct is, and long has been, one of those awkward con- 
flicts which each man has to reconcile for himself, and 
perhaps the less said about it the better. But it is proper 
to point out that the philosophy of evolution involves no 
inconsistencies of this kind. It deduces a code of mo- 
rality, than which none is more exalted nor more exacting, 
from the same laws that regulate the conduct of an hon- 
est and sagacious man in the daily walks of life when he 
seeks to lay the foundations of a fortune and maintain 
and establish his family. The fundamental laws upon 
which the doctrine of evolution rests have a bearing on 



WHAT MR. LELAND GOT NO CHANCE TO SAY. 83 

the questions that daily confront business-men that is by 
no means remote. They are of practical and every-day 
importance. The law of the persistence of force, at the 
foundation of the evolution theory — that every manifes- 
tation of power must be preceded and followed by equiv- 
alent manifestations — has other applications than in pure 
physics. If understood, and remembered at the right 
time, it would protect men from worthless investments in 
Keely motors and kindred humbugs. If the laws of mat- 
ter, which prove that by no sort of manipulation can 
something be had for nothing, were more familiar, men 
would not be led away by the vagaries of fiat money nor 
be deluded by the sophistries of protection. Not only 
would there come from such knowledge aid in avoiding 
errors and worthily winning wealth and honor, but it 
V/^ould bring to men a much-needed assistance in the exe- 
cution of the desire, so often felt and so often proving 
abortive, to confer upon their fellows some portion of the 
benefits received ; so that in their endowments and be- 
quests there might appear a partial recognition of the agen- 
cies and the labors that have made such success possible. 

It is obviously better that the laws that govern our 
endeavors should be followed intelligently than that they 
should be obeyed or disobeyed unknowingly, for they are 
inexorable, and no plea of ignorance avails. Man's ac- 
tivities are regulated by natural laws as exactly and as 
absolutely as are the movements of the spheres, and that 
which we are fond of calling human progress is but one 
phase of evolution in its comprehensive sweep. 

To the man who has done more than any other to un- 
fold to us these truths, the whole thinking world does hom- 
age. The tributes which have on this occasion been paid 
to his worth and his work have been so earnest and so 
touching, that it remains only to say to them a most 
hearty amen ! 



84 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 



LETTERS, 



Boston, November 6, 1882. 

Dear Sir : I regret that my engagements will not 
permit me to enjoy the meeting in honor of Mr. Spencer, 
which I hope may take place, as proposed, on the evening 
of the 9th of November. 

It would have been a great pleasure to me to testify 
by my presence that I share the feelings of respect and 
admiration of which this occasion is one passing mani- 
festation. Mr. Spencer has come nearer to the realization 
of Bacon's claim of all knowledge as his province than 
any philosopher of his time. It is a life's work to exhaust 
a single specialty as it must be studied to-day. " Go to 
the ant," with Sir John Lubbock ; " consider her ways," 
and learn what it is to study a square inch or two of 
Nature's surface. The man who takes the survey of the 
entire order of things as his specialty, must needs have a 
long stride and a clear outlook. He must have a well- 
measured and largely extended base-line of ascertained 
fact to begin with, and command the views which extend 
themselves from all the heights of the various sciences. 

The facts of development furnished Mr. Spencer with 
his base-line. From the summit of one branch of knowl- 
edge after another, he has brought its phenomena into 
relation with this base-line and with each other, until we 
look with amazement upon the reach and compass of his 
vast triangulation of the universe. 

Nature taught him her great law in the life of an ^gg 
which completes its history — a mass of organizable 
matter v/hich has escaped being turned into an omelet ; 
a spot ; a line ; a groove ; a group of walled spaces with 
their soft contents ; self -distribution into regions ; self- 
differentiation into tissues and organs ; self -movement as 
a Yv^hole ; self-consciousness as an individual ; emergence 
at length from the inviolate secrecy of the divine studio 
Avhere it has been shaped, a creature of God, full-armed 
to fight for its life against the elements. Just in this 



LETTER FROM ANDREW D. WHITE. 85 

same way, and no other, are built up the Newton s, the 
Youngs, the Darwins, the Spencers, who interpret the 
hieroglyphics of nature and of history for common mor- 
tals. All is development, and the standing illustration of 
it was laid before the world by the bride of Chanticleer, 
when she proclaimed to the virgin creation that she was 
a mother. 

An apple gave the hint of gravitation. An egg taught 
the lesson of evolution. The old Roman banquets pro- 
ceeded ab ovo usque ad malum ; the courses of science 
have gone just the other way — a nialo usque ad ovum — 
from the apple of Isaac Kewton to the egg of Herbert 
Spencer, 

May he live to place the cap-stone on that pyramid of 
achievements which is already one of the wonders of the 
modern intellectual world ! 

Yery truly, yours, 

O. W. Holmes. 
Dr. W. J. YouMANS, 

Secretary of Committee. 



Ithaca, N. Y., November 8, 1882. 

Deae Sir : I regret exceedingly that my duties at 
this university absolutely forbid my accepting your very 
kind and attractive invitation. Apart from the pleasure 
of joining in a festival such as you propose, and of meet- 
ing your distinguished guest, I would rejoice to add my 
testimony to that of others regarding the services ren- 
dered to this country by Mr. Herbert Spencer. 

No competent person can look over the history of 
education in the United States during the past twenty 
years and not see that Mr. Spencer's ideas have been 
among the principal forces in bringing about the great 
and happy changes which have taken place. The move- 
ment in favor of physical training as a basis for intel- 
lectual training, the development of mental training in 
accordance with the methods and sequences of nature, 
the tendency more and more toward a moral training 
based upon ascertained natural law, the prominence given 



86 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

to studies in science and to a more scientific method in 
pursuing every study — in short, the bringing of all hu- 
man development into harmony with the methods stamped 
upon the constitution of the universe — for all this prog- 
ress, our debt to him is great indeed. 

And I am persuaded that we are but at the begin- 
ning of reforms which his thought has done so much to 
set in motion. More and more his ideas are becoming 
known, and more and more they are embodied in the 
practice of our best schools from highest to lowest. 
This tendency is no mere fashion ; it is not at all 
spasmodic ; it does not even seem to the casual ob- 
server rapid ; but no thoughtful student can deny that 
this progress has a steadiness and persistency which 
give the best assurances of its long and beneficent con- 
tinuance. 

And I would add thanks for what he has done in 
planting a good germ into the thought of the entire na- 
tion within these last weeks. His recent utterances as to 
certain great wants among iis, if pondered well, may also 
bring us a blessing. 

With renewed thanks and regrets, I remain, dear sir, 
very respectfully and truly yours, 

Andeew D. White. 
Dr. W. J. YouMANS, 

Secretary of Committee. 



Columbia College, New York, 
President's Room, November lOy 1882. 
My dear Pkofessor : I can not refrain from ex- 
pressing to you my regret and sorrow that I could not be 
present at the demonstration in honor of your illustrious 
guest of last evening, Mr. Herbert Spencer. It is impos- 
sible that any one should feel more profoundly than I 
do the magnitude of the debt which the world owes to 
that great man. In revealing and demonstrating the laws 
which govern all progress, physical, moral, or social, he 
has himself contributed the most powerful impulse to the 
progress of the human race toward the good and the true 



LETTER Fr.OM R. UEBER NEWTON. 87 

that tliis or any other century has known. His philosophy 
is the only philosophy that satisfies an earnestly inquiring 
mind. All other philosophies (at least in my experience) 
serve more to perplex than to enlighten. As it seems to 
me, we have in Herbert Spencer not only the profoundest 
thinker of our time, but the most capacious and most 
powerful intellect of all time. Aristotle and his master 
were not more beyond the pygmies who preceded them 
than he is beyond Aristotle. Kant, Hegel, Fichte, and 
Schelling are gropers in the dark by the side of him. 
In all the history of science there is but one name which 
can be compared to his, and that is Newton's ; but New- 
ton never attempted so wide a field, and how he would 
have succeeded in it, had he done so, must be only mat- 
ter of conjecture. 

The peculiarity of Herbert Spencer's system seems to 
me to be that it appeals directly to our intuitions, and is 
therefore at once clearly intelligible and self-evidently 
true ; which is a character I can not give to any of the 
purely speculative philosophies with which the world 
abounds. 

To have testified, therefore, by my presence or my 
voice, last evening, to my sense of the inappreciable value 
of the services rendered by this great man to the race of 
humanity, would have afforded me a satisfaction I iind 
it difficult here to express. As you are aware of the 
causes which prevented, you will, I am sure, sympathize 
with me in my loss and my regret. 

Sincerely yours, 

F. A. P. Barnard. 
Dr. W. J. YouMANS, 

Secretary of Committee. 



Garden City, November 5, 1883. 
Dear Sir : I inclose my check for $12 for one ticket 
to the dinner to be given to Mr. Herbert Spencer. Please 
send my ticket to my sexton, Mr. S. M. Crandell, 716 
Seventh Avenue, icith the hour noted on it. If I get back 
from Boston in time, I shall be at the dinner. 



88 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

I am particularly glad that your committee has in- 
cluded some of the genus parson in your invitations, for 
certain well-known peculiarities in its make-up have been 
displayed in a rather ungracious manner toward your dis- 
tinguished guest. I am sure that all the best representa- 
tives of the clerical vocation, however they may differ 
from Mr. Spencer, entertain the profoundest respect for 
his abilities and character, and the sincerest gratitude for 
the single-minded service he has rendered the cause of 
truth. I am sure that all liberal-minded clergymen wel- 
come truth — whoever brings it into the world, and in 
Avhatsoever shape it comes — and expect in the future no 
other basis for real religion than the truths science and 
philosophy yield ; though they surely look to see those 
truths blossom in the imagination into worship, and turn 
in action into the forces of social virtue. 

Yours, etc., 

R. Heber Kewton. 
Dr. W, J. YouMANS, 

Secretccry of Committee. 



Cincinnati, November' 6, 188^. 

My dear Sir : If it had been at all possible, I should 
have accepted with the greatest pleasure your invitation 
to attend the banquet in honor of Mr. Herbert Spencer 
on the eve of his return to Europe. Ever since the pub- 
lication of his first volume of essays I have admired him 
as one of the brightest and most vigorous intellects of 
our time, and I now regard him as a philosophical writer 
who has done more than any other living Englishman, at 
least, to stimulate the thought and expand the horizon of 
his contemporaries. Although I am constrained to dis- 
sent from some of his propositions, and can not venture 
to express an opinion as to a large part of his writings 
covering a field to which I am a stranger, yet it appears 
to me that the value of his contributions to those sciences 
which deal with the life and growth of society can hardly 
be overestimated. I regret sincerely that I am unable to 



LETTER FROM GEORGE M. DAVIE. gg 

avail myself of the opportunity you offer me to press the 
hand of one of the foremost thinkers of the age. 
Very truly, yours, etc., 

J. B. Stallo. 
Dr. W. J. YouMANS, 

Secretary of Committee, 



Louisville, Kentucky, November 5>, 18S2. 

Dear Sir : Upon my return after a ten days' absence 
from home I found, through the kindness of your com- 
mittee, an invitation to attend the banquet to Mr. Herbert 
Spencer to-night. Had it been possible, I should certain- 
ly have done so, notwithstanding the distance and other 
engagements. 

I admire and, indeed, reverence so much Mr. Spencer's 
intellectual and moral greatness, that I should have 
through life esteemed it a most pleasant memory to meet 
him and joined in doing him honor. I had arranged, in 
conjunction with some other friends of his, to make his 
reception in Kentucky such as would have shown the ap- 
preciation in which he is held ; and it was quite a dis- 
appointment that he was compelled to abandon his West- 
ern excursion. 

I trust that I may yet have the privilege of meeting 
him, here or in England. 

Respectfully yours, 

George M. Davie. 

Dr. W. J. YouMANS, 

Secretary of Committee. 



New York City, 208 Fifth Avenue, November 6^ 1882. 

My dear Sir : I am in receipt of your cordial invita- 
tion addressed to me, as a student of psychology, to join 
in a complimentary dinner to Mr. Herbert Spencer, and 
accept the same with the greatest pleasure. 

Socrates, in the " Phsedo," is made to quote to Simmias 



90 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

and Cebes the old saying in the mysteries, '* Many are the 
thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics," meaning, as he 
interprets the words, "the true philosophers." These 
words are true for all times, not less for the present than 
for the days of the great opponent of the Sophists. They 
are peculiarly true for that department of philosophy 
which we are accustomed to call psychology, a science 
which stands second to none in the importance of its re- 
lations to the progress of universal knowledge. 

We have had opportunities to honor men eminent in 
various branches of physics, to celebrate the achievements 
of those who have made priceless contributions to politics, 
economics, and the other sociological sciences, but I do 
not remember that we in this city ever have had occasion 
to testify in any public manner our appreciation of a 
master in psychology. True, in Mr. Spencer we have 
pretty much all the virtues combined (except reverence 
for our time-honored methods of practical politics) ; but, 
while we honor him as a universal philosopher, let us not 
forget that we are doing homage to the greatest psy- 
chologist of modern times — indeed, I believe I am justi- 
fied in saying, the greatest in the world's history. 

This is no place to vindicate Mr. Spencer's claims, but 
I think his peculiar merit lies in the fact that he has ap- 
plied the law of evolution with its consequent methods to 
mental phenomena, and read the history of the develop- 
ment of those phenomena in the light of that law. The 
effect of this application has been twofold : in the first 
place, in showing that the laws of mental development in 
the individual, through association and representation, are 
but laws of evolutional differentiation and redintegration, 
and thus to be subsumed under the more general law of 
evolution which applies alike to the inorganic, the or- 
ganic, and the superorganic worlds ; in the second place, 
in showing how the progress of each individual mind is 
but an intermediate link in the general development of 
mind from the very lowest limits of organic nature, thus 
adding and making necessary to a true and complete 
mental science the whole realm of objective and compara- 
tive psychology, and connecting thereby the sciences of 
mind with those of material nature. It can scarcely be 
estimated how much this must contribute to the unifica- 



LETTER FROM FRED. W. HINRICHS. 91 

tion of knowledge. And this magnificent service Mr. 
Spencer has rendered. His work marks a new epoch in 
psychological science. 

I am, my dear sir, very respectfully yours, 

Daniel Gkeenleaf Thompson. 
Dr. W. J. YouMANs, 

Secretary of Committee. 



New York, November 9, 1882. 

My dear Sir : The invitation of your committee to 
the complimentary dinner to Mr. Herbert Spencer reached 
me in due course. I have waited until now to reply, 
hoping that circumstances would so shape themselves that 
I could send my acceptance. 

My admiration for the distinguished Englishman 
whom you meet to honor is so great and unqualified that 
I write my regrets with more than disappointment. As 
a member of a church, I can still read Mr. Sj)eneer's com- 
ments on the " creeds outworn " with the greatest spirit- 
ual profit. None but the most unobservant will deny 
that Herbert Spencer has done more than any other living 
man to modify the prevailing popular religious notions — 
I believe, very much for the better of the Church and hu- 
manity in general. 

My desire to meet Mr. Spencer is not only strong by 
reason of my earnest admiration for the man, but is, I 
may say, painfully curious, on account of the perplexing 
condition of mind into which he has plunged me as to 
various philosophical and political subjects. 

Brought up, as I was, by an old Scotch professor, in 
the school which holds that we have a separate, distinct, 
and lively factor, called " intuition," in our intellectual 
and moral make-up, which discloses to us absolute truths, 
quite independent of experience, I still cling, in philoso- 
phy as in religion, to the early lessons of ray youth. But 
my judgment can not but recognize the tremendous force 
of the arguments advanced by the school of " experience." 
We are all, perhaps, unconsciously drifting toward a 



92 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

general and complete accei^tance of Herbert Spencer's 
philosophy, with its feiv postulates and its rigid logic. 

Our national policy has almost uninterruptedly fa- 
vored a protection, so called, of home industries. Some- 
times I fear that the tendency toward the realization of 
a paternal form of government in other directions is very 
decided. Our economic system, clubbed by some the 
" American system," demands that the Government foster, 
yea, even bring into being, "infant industries," which^ 
we know can exist only at the expense of all, for the 
benefit of the few. In educational circles a like spirit of 
protecting the citizen against himself, or his own im- 
providence, prevails, and seems to be growing from year 
to year. The only reason, or excuse, for jniblic education 
is entirely lost sight of. As a member of the Brooklyn 
Board of Education, I hear frequent mention of the im- 
mediate pressing necessity for hie/her education at the 
public cost. The elementary education for all classes, 
which is generally regarded as indispensable for the safety 
of the republic, and as a proper police regulation, is 
neglected for that something called a higher education. 
The advocates of the latter forget that only the favored 
few can afford to spend sufficient time to avail themselves 
of the high-school or free college ; that such favored few 
can generally well afford to jm^/ for their schooling ; that 
in not paying for said schooling they are being supported 
by the community at large, including the poorest, who, 
though not directly contributing to the tax-fund, are yet 
indirectly, by the enhanced cost of living, suffering from 
the burden of improper taxation. The advocates of this 
higher education, above all things, forget that, to assist a 
man to stand %t^ho is very loell able to stand alone, is to 
weaken him. The self-reliance and energy which we 
possess as a people or a race, as Mr. Spencer has taught 
us in more ways than one, are due to the fact that we 
have generally been left alone "to work out our own 
salvation." 

" The Proper Sphere of Government " and Mr. Spen- 
cer's works on education have so affected my mind that 
it baffles me at times to see intelligent men insisting upon 
increasing the functions of government, and upon rob- 
bing the people of their most lasting and valuable educa- 



LETTER FROM W. D. LE SUEUR. 93 

tion acquired only in the school of self-culture and self- 
reliance. 

I do now most heartily believe that Herbert Spencer's 
presence with us will make his influence felt more than 
ever, and that his words will be " as leaven to leaven the 
whole lump " of our political and social life. 

Very sincerely, etc., 

Feed. W. Hineichs. 
Dr. W. J. YouMANS, 

Secretary of Gommiitee, 



Ottawa, November S, 1882. 

Dear Sie : I thank you very much for the invitation 
you have kindly sent me to take part in a comiDlimentary 
dinner to be given to Mr. Herbert Spencer on the 9th 
instant. Circumstances, I regret to say, will render it 
impossible for me to be present on the occasion in ques- 
tion ; but I beg to assure you of my hearty sympathy 
with the object the committee have in view, of paying 
honor to one who stands forth incontestably as the fore- 
most philosopher of the age. 

It is now many years since Mr. Spencer's writings first 
fascinated me by their logical vigor, their breadth of de- 
sign, and their sustained elevation of moral tone and pur- 
pose. To my youthful enthusiasm he appeared the one 
man in the whole world who was fully equipped to fight 
the intellectual battles of the time — a kind of Mr. Great- 
heart, under whose powerful protection humble pilgrims 
might journey in safety to a land of light and truth. 
And though, as I have hinted, some years have passed 
since then, and I have learned to do justice to other he- 
roes of thought, I am not sure that my youthful enthusi- 
asm was so far astray. 

What has chiefly interested me in Mr. Spencer's phi- 
losophy has always been its claim to lay the foundations 
for a rational system of human morality. I do not say 
the foundations of morality ; for these it does not rest 
with any man to lay. The scheme of things under which 



94: THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

we live eitlier provides, or does not provide, for morality 
as the developed form of human conduct. If it does not, 
and if such morality as has heretofore existed in the 
world has been but a by-product, as it were, of transient 
theological systems, not the natural result of social action 
and reaction, then indeed is the lot of humanity a most 
unhappy one. If, on the other hand, there is that in the 
constitution of things which not only " makes for right- 
eousness," but leads up to a love of righteousness for its 
own sake, then the highest service which any thinker can 
render to a doubting age is to bring the fact clearly to 
view ; in the words of Lucretius — 

" E tenebris . . . tarn clarum extollere lumen — " 

so lighting up forces, as the poet goes on most happily to 
remark, the true advantages of life. This is a case in 
which much depends upon whether we are conscious of 
the rule of nature's working. It is one thing for the 
forces of nature to act upon beings unconscious of their 
drift or principle, and quite another for them to act upon 
a race of intelligent co-operators. To produce such a 
race is the aim, and I fully believe is the tendency, of all 
Mr. Spencer's writings. The world is half-conscious of 
this already — it will be more fully conscious of it by- 
and-by ; and the fame of Mr. Spencer will rest secure 
on the basis not only of his splendid intellectual gifts and 
achievements, but of his broad sympathy with humanity, 
and his lofty conception of the destinies of our race. 
Believe me, dear sir, with great personal regard, 
Yours very faithfully, 

W. D. Le Sueur. 
Dr. W. J. YouMANS, 

Secretary of Committee. 



LETTER FROM WILMOT L. WARREN. 95 



Springfield Repcrlican, Springfield, Mass., 

Novemher 7, 1882. 

My dear Sir : It will give me great pleasure to share 
in the opportunity to do honor to Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
as proposed in your kind invitation of the 27th ultimo. 

No man has more powerfully and healthfully stimu- 
lated the thoughtful minds of this generation, and espe- 
cially of its younger portion. In sociology, especially as 
regards the tendencies of modern political life, and in the 
great field of education, so important in this country 
where education is undertaken by the state, we ow^e to 
him a great debt. The next generation, reaping the fruit 
of the seed which he has sown, will probably realize this 
more keenly then the present. 

Hoping you will pardon the unavoidable delay and 
haste of this acknowledgment, 

I remain, your obedient servant, 

WiLMOT L. Warken. 

Dr. W, J. YOLMANS, 

Secrdary of Committee. 



Holly Hills, Maryland, Novemher 6, 1882. 

My dear Sir : Be so good as to accept for yourself, 
and present to the other members of the committee, my 
sincere thanks for the invitation to the dinner to be given 
to Mr. Herbert Spencer at Delmonico's on the 9th instant. 
Nothing, I am sure, but the fact that Mr. Spencer came 
to the United States for rest and health, with his expressed 
desire that his visit might be one of quiet observation, has 
prevented such public demonstrations of the esteem in 
which he is held personally and as a writer, on this side 
of the Atlantic, as have very rarely been bestowed upon 
distinguished visitors. Mr. Spencer is eminently a teacher 
in whom there is no guile, and thousands of those who 
differ radically with him in his religious views, and w^ho 
can not quite folloy/ him in some of his philosophic teach- 
ings, greatly honor him for his independence and upright- 



96 THE SPENCER BANQUET. 

ness, for the clearness and vigor of his style, the ability 
with which he presents his own doctrines, and the fair- 
ness of his treatment of opponents. 

I have great admiration of him, and sincerely regret 
that my engagements at home prevent me from being 
present. 

Very truly yours, 

Hugh McCulloch. 

Dr. W. J. YODMANS, 

Secretary of Committee. 



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